Chapter 1

Finally, note that buttons can't be focused: OK is always on the Confirm hardware key.
Without a keyboard, other buttons are selected with a pointer.
10.1.3 A Multipage Dialog
A sample multipage dialog taken from the UIQ Agenda application can be seen in Figure
10.4.
Figure 10.4
I got this dialog by selecting the Preferences menu item on the Edit menu pane in Agenda.
This allowed me to customize my Agenda view, such as the number of viewed hours in a
day. However, there are more details that do not fit.
This is a multipage dialog. I can tap with the pointer on either of the page tabs. Tapping with
the pointer on the tab marked Alarm gives me a page on which I can change alarm-related
options such as the alarm sound.
The button array on the bottom right is associated with the entire dialog – not with each
page. It's bad style to change it when the pages change.
10.1.4 Cue Text
You should make every effort to ensure that the meaning of the controls in your dialogs is
transparently obvious to most users. Be prepared to work hard at this: you'll need to choose
text and functionality with care, order lines and pages in your dialogs sensibly, and be
particularly careful about options and initial setup. With some thought, you can often produce
an application that needs little help with text of any kind.
Sometimes, though, it's not possible – or perhaps not practical – to achieve this ideal. One
useful tool when that happens is cue text in dialogs. An example from Battleships is shown
in Figure 10.5.