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Dialogs
A dialog is a powerful and convenient way to let users interact with an application. It provides users with the relevant options for a certain task and allows users to select the options that suit them.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of dialogs:
- Simple Dialogs, which ask a question. This includes Yes-No questions and confirmation requests.
- Complex Dialogs, which allow users to fine-tune an operation.
- Standard Dialogs, which are complex dialogs that KDE provides for frequently-used operations such as printing and file selection.
All dialogs should have a title that describes what the dialog is about. The title should also contain the name of the application to which the dialog belongs.
Dialogs should never have menu bars or tool bars inside them.
Dialogs, just as all other types of windows, must conform to the window size requirements.
| Button | Usage | Details |
|---|---|---|
| <action> | Mutually exclusive with Apply |
The action button can be 'ok', 'save' or 'print' or similar. When used together with Cancel the dialog will be closed after pressing this button. When used together with Close the dialog will stay open. |
| Cancel | Mutually exclusing with close | Pressing this button will close the dialog discarding changes. Changes made earlier with the apply button will be used. |
| Close | Mutually exclusing with cancel | Pressing this button will close the dialog discarding changes. Changes made earlier with the apply button will be used. |
| Apply | Optional, but never with Close | Apply changes made in the dialog and keep the dialog open. Using this button only makes sense when the <action> button (see above) is an 'ok' button. |
| Help | Optional | A button labeled "Help" when activated should show a help-window with help relating to the dialog. |
| Defaults | Optional | The button sets all the settings in the dialog to the system defaults. This is only usefull for dialogs that change settings of some sort. |
| Reset | Optional |
This is the opposite of Apply and is therefor only usefull in conjunction with an apply button.
The reset button does not close the dialog, and resets the values to the ones used in the
system currently. It has the same result as closing the dialog without saving changes and
re-opening it again. Reset is depricated for most dialogs; only dialogs that are hard to reach after closing may benefit from a reset button. |
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