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Re: Effective Arguments for Unique Control Names...?
Subject:Re: Effective Arguments for Unique Control Names...? From:dan_roberts -at- adp -dot- com To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Tue, 5 Aug 2003 14:14:48 -0600
As always, it depends.
If, as another responder suggested, the engineers too 2 controls w/
different functionality and gave them the same name, you've got a problem.
OTOH, if the same control functionality is simply applied in 2 different
places, then I'd argue that the control *should* be named the same. What
I'm impagining is that the engineers put a little popup calendar widget
beside a "Start Date" and "End Date" fields. Why would you want to have
different names - Start Date Calendar, and End Date Calendar. The user
should b
So, imho, if the former is the case, you're quite right to raise the
issue. If the latter is the case, i wouldn't think there's an issue to
raise.
> The team that is responsible for designing the user interface assigned the
> same name to two controls (I'll call the controls "C"). Based on their
> experience training new users, this team doesn't see any issue with the
> identical names because each "C" control is related to the trigger-control
> to its left (I'll call them "A" and "B"), as illustrated below.
> A ? C
> B ? C
>
> Because of the layout, the team believes users won't have a problem
> figuring out which of the identically-named controls to select.
>
> But from a user documentation perspective, identically-named controls can
> present a problem. There's the context of the actual procedure and there's
> the context of the table listing the control descriptions. Probably there
> are other contexts I haven't yet considered. Or am I being too finicky?
>
> Suggestions, anyone?