I'm designing a bunch of dialog boxes. I'm doing something to indicate
which are the required fields (but I won't say what, because that's not the
discussion I want to have).

The system administrators who use this Web tool will fill out the
information in the boxes and press OK. Sometimes they'll have left out some
required information and they'll get an error message.

Can we prevent those error situations? Indicating which fields are required
is supposed to do that, but we all know that people don't always pay
attention. That's why we write the error messages.

I'm thinking of disabling the OK button until the required information is
entered, but that can be as annoying as it is helpful if people don't
understand the situation.

If I put in "3 required fields still empty" at the bottom of the dialog,
will that help, or is it just more information to ignore? If I do that
*and* disable the OK button, will that help?

Anyone try this? Summarize to me and I'll write it up.

thanks                          -- hs

..............................
Hal Shubin
Interaction Design -- Design & strategy for the Web
www.user.com, 617 489 6595

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