[Gnome] No Close Button on Some Dialogs

• Apr 19, 2015 - 11:35
Type
Graphical (UI)
Severity
S4 - Minor
Status
active
Project
MuseScore

A few dialogs have no clear way to be closed. (See attached screenshot.)

Affected Dialogs:
* Master Palette
* Resource Manager (only tested in 2.0 -- crashes in pre-release)

OS: Ubuntu Gnome 14.10
MuseScore versions tested:
* MuseScore v2.1 pre-release: revision 953c0fa
* MuseScore v2.0.0: revision 6e47f74

Attachment Size
no-close.png 36.89 KB

Comments

• Apr 19, 2015 - 17:44

Is it a Gnome thing to don't have dialog decoration by default? If yes, where can I file a bug?

More seriously how do people close a dialog normally?

Reply

• Apr 19, 2015 - 21:25

Gnome's modal dialogs don't have standard window decorations (including close buttons) and they're generally closed with a "Close" button in the bottom right corner.

Gnome's not alone in this behavior, by the way -- standard Mac OS X modal dialogs have had this behavior for a really long time (http://etutorials.org/shared/images/tutorials/tutorial_87/06fig21.jpg, http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/90/43/63561162985308/0/ultimate-guide-pa…). But it seems that Qt doesn't follow the standard there and shows window decorations anyway.

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• Apr 20, 2015 - 08:13

In my opinion a close button would clutter the ui for other platforms. Not sure if we could/should detect Gnome... to fix it only in this case.

Reply

• Apr 20, 2015 - 08:51

I don't think it would clutter the dialogs -- the majority of modal dialogs MuseScore has, including the Start Center, already have a "Close" button. Also, the Resource Manager has an oddly superfluous tab bar -- removing it would compensate for adding a "Close" button.

Adding "Close" would also make the dialogs more consistent with Mac OS X, where modal dialogs don't have title bar close buttons either [1]. Additionally, the Windows HIG prescribes: "Put an explicit Close button in the dialog box body. Dialog boxes need a clear exit point. Don't depend on users finding the Close button on the title bar." [2]

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Co…
[2] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742499%28v=v…

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