Too many buttons?

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Layna Andersen <<...got a message that said "too many authorable
buttons displayed at once" and hung up the whole thing.  OK, I agree
that it's too many -- there are at least 100 field description pages
going on here.  What would YOU do?>>

If you really need the buttons, insert them as bitmaps instead of
buttons and provide label text beside each one that serves as the
hyperlink. In addition to solving the "too many buttons" problem,
this also serves an instructional role: over time, people should
learn to associate the hypertext link with the icon and will no
longer need to consult the help file just to figure out what the
button does. Bonus: You could _precede_ the bitmap with the label,
alphabetize the labels, and provide the equivalent of a task-based
index that helps users find what function they're looking for.
(Assuming that this is your goal... if the goal is actually to
help users look up buttons, then you're better to follow the
on-screen sequence to facilitate searching: "OK, I'm looking for
the 7th icon from the right...".)

I must admit, you've piqued my curiosity. What do you need 100
buttons for? I'm sure there's a simpler way to do this, and it'd
prove to be an interesting problem for techwr-l to chew over.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"By God, for a moment there it all made sense!"--Gahan Wilson

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