Re: Window terminology (tabs)

["Susan Self @ignite" <susan -at- ALSYS -dot- COM>]

Tony Ioven wrote:

>Julie MacAller writes:
>>    According to the "Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design"
>>    included with Visual C++, they're called "property pages." A
>>    collection of property pages is called a property sheet.

>I'd be careful about using a term from a programmer's guide.  A term in a
>programmer's guide isn't always the same as the term Microsoft recommends
>for end-user docs (for example, "accelerators" vs. "shortcut keys").
>Also, I think "property pages" and "property sheet" sound a little
>highfalutin.

>I think "page" sounds right.  A couple of people on the list have used
>"page" to describe what you access when you click a tab, but the
>tendency seems to be to want to call it something else.

A term from a programmer's guide is appropriate if you are writing for
programmers, which many writers are. Sometimes a term can be the same
for end users and programmers, however.

Kent Newton wrote:

>Using the 'xxx dialog box' is fine if you have only one tab with one page
>to display.  But suppose you have multiple tabs and pages in one dialog
>box?  Do you refer to each page in that dialog box?  That could get
>confusing to the user.  For example, when you run Windows 95 Help, you
>get a dialog box with three tabs:  Contents, Index, and Find.  What do
>you call what?

>I see a hierarchy here.  Using my terminology, you have one dialog box
>(the help dialog box), which contains the Contents tab and folder, the
>Index tab and folder, and the Find tab and folder.  If you call each page
>a dialog box, you have four dialog boxes in one: the help dialog box,
>which contains the Contents tab and dialog box, the Index tab and dialog
>box, and the Find tab and dialog box. That's a lot of dialog boxes to
>keep track of.

This approach brings me back to my original posting of the term a
"tabbed dialog." This could be changed to be a "tabbed dialog box"
perhaps to be more familiar sounding to end users and to distinguish it
from a non-tabbed dialog box. The tabbed dialog box would represent the
entire object, with all the tabs and pages. I prefer using the term
"page" rather than "folder." Although the tabs suggest a folder, a
folder usually contains multiple pages, but a tab in a tabbed dialog
box consists of only one page. So, I would write about the Contents tab
and page, the Index tab and page, and the Find tab and page in a tabbed
dialog box.

Susan Self
susan -at- thomsoft -dot- com

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