> "File/Print Packet" is still there, works as before, and still has
> control-P as its accelerator; it's grayed-out if there's no packet
> selected (some UI books seem to suggest that graying out controls is
> better than having a "Sorry, you can't do that now" dialog box, although
> the latter could, at least, tell you *why* you can't do that, instead of
> just leaving you with a grayed-out control that you really want to do
> something with, and no clue what you have to do to enable that control,
> so maybe those UI books aren't entirely correct - I've heard that some
> UI person praised AT&T's "we're sorry, your call cannot be completed as
> dialed" error because it's so polite and apologizes to the user, but
> that error always frustrates me because it doesn't tell me how I
> *should* dial the call, e.g. "leave out the area code", "put in the
> area code", etc.).
BTW, I found the following on the AskTog Web site (Bruce Tognazzini's
Web site; he's a UI designer):
I must defend Adobe against your charge that it is all but
impossible to figure out why some feature is currently disabled.
This is Apple's fault. I proposed fourteen years ago that users
be able to click on disabled items and have revealed to them why
the item was disabled and how they could go about enabling it.
Unfortunately, it never got into the system, so there was
nothing there for Microsoft to copy when stealing Windows.
Bruce gets a gold star from me for that suggestion....
