About Screen Review
Author: Stepan Doubrava
$Revision: 1.14 $
$Date: 2007/08/29 23:28:52 $
Use Cases and Scenarios
1 Inquiring about Version
User inquires about the version of the product Scenario:
- Invoking main menu item Help | About displays new window with the version number
2 Inquiring about Build Information
User wants to copy build information for communication with IT
Scenario:
- Invoking main menu item Help | About displays new window
- Selects desired text from debug information area by mouse or using keyboard accelerators Ctrl+A (selects all text)
- Copies the information to the clipboard using keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C or context menu.
Specification
We have considered several variants of the About box and ultimately we have decided to use simple solution resembling common dialog, because we didn't want to compromise on functionality and usability on behalf of nice design. Unlike the current About box we would like to fit all the information on one tab.
We want to fit following components on the about screen:
- Product name and logo
- Link to a web page
- Dynamic (extendable) copyright area
- Area for the debugging information
- Close button
Components
- Copyright area is extendable to allow multiple copyrights to be added. This feature might be required by some plugins where third party technologies are used.
- Debugging information area is standard, 4 lines, non-editable text area, where users might intuitively select text by mouse or keyboard shortcuts and copy it into the clipboard. If more lines then 4 is required it should show scroll bars.
- We are using close button to close the dialog because on some systems the windows managers may not provide such controls within the window decoration.
Competition
