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"Discoverability. Encourage your users to discover functionality by providing cues about how to use user interface elements. If an element is clickable, for example, it must appear that way, or a user may never try clicking it. Be sure to use Aqua controls properly and avoid making controls invisible to inexperienced users." In iTunes, if you're viewing a playlist, and you want to delete a track from the library rather than the playlist, you hold "Alt" down while hitting the "Delete" key. This is the only way to delete the track without locating it in the main "Library" list and deleting it from there. Holding down Alt and dragging to the trash or holding down Alt and selecting Delete from the Edit menu just remove the entry from the playlist. Dragging to trash, selecting the "Delete" item in the Edit or contextual menus, or hitting the "Delete" key without holding Alt also just remove the track from the Playlist. And you can't even bring up teh contextual menu with the Alt key held down. There is no way to "discover" this. It doesn't say that this option is available in the "Delete" dialog, and holding down the Alt key doesn't provide any feedback. You just have to know. Now if this was just a shortcut for the "Delete Track" menu entry, that would be fine. But the Mac user interface is full of special cases like this, where Alt-click and Cmd-click do special things. And there's NEVER any indication of it. Anywhere. You just have to memorize this stuff. It makes the options to Berkeley "ls" seem intuitive.
Generated at 14:43 on 31 Mar 2007 by mariachi 0.52