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Panels that coexist with other windows and need to use the least amount of screen space possible may use small or mini scroll bars. If a window has small or mini scroll bars, all other controls within the window content area should also be the smaller version. For more information, see “Using Small and Mini Versions of Controls” (page 344).

Make sure you don’t use a scroll bar when you should really use a slider. Use sliders to change settings; use scroll bars only for representing the relative position of the visible portion of a document or list. For information about sliders, see “Slider Controls” (page 296).

Automatic Scrolling

Most of the time, the user should be in control of scrolling. Your application must perform automatic scrolling in these cases:

■When your application performs an operation that results in making a new selection or moving the insertion point (for example, when the user searches for some text and your application locates it), scroll the document to show the new selection.

■When the user enters information from the keyboard at a location not visible within the window (for example, the insertion point is on one page and the user has navigated to another page), scroll the document automatically to incorporate and display the new information.

Your application determines the distance to scroll.

■When the user moves the pointer past the edge of the window while holding down the mouse button to make an extended selection, scroll the document in the direction the pointer moves.

■When the user selects something, scrolls to a new location, and then tries to perform an operation on the selection, scroll so the selection is showing before your application performs the operation.

Whenever your application scrolls a document automatically, move the document only as much as is necessary. That is, if part of a selection is showing after the user performs an operation, don’t scroll at all. If your application can reveal the selection by scrolling in only one direction, don’t scroll in both.

When automatically scrolling to a selection, try to show the selection in context. When the selection is too large to show in its entirety, it might be a good idea to show some context instead of having the selection fill the window.

Panels

The term panel is a general term used to describe auxiliary windows that contain controls and options that affect the active document or selection. Different types of panels may have more specific names, such as Colors window or inspector. Note that in end-user documentation, it’s usually clearer to describe panels as windows, when it is necessary to specify their type. When possible, you should refer to all windows by their title, not their type.

For some applications, such as highly visual, immersive applications, transparent panels are appropriate. For most applications, however, standard panel types are best. See Figure 14-1 (page 188) for an example of a transparent panel; to learn more about them, see “Transparent Panels” (page 225).

Panelsareeitherapplication-specificorsystemwide. Application-specificpanelsdisappearwhentheapplication is deactivated.

222 Panels

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Systemwide panels, such as the Colors window and the Fonts window, float on top of all open windows.

You can create a modeless panel, such as a tools panel, to present controls or settings that affect the active document window. Panels are useful for keeping extremely important controls or information accessible at all times in the context of a user task. Because panels take up screen space, however, don’t use them when you can meet the need by using a modeless dialog (the user changes settings and then closes the dialog) or by adding a few appropriate controls to a toolbar.

A user can open several panels at a time; they float on top of document windows. When a user makes a document active, all of the application’s panels should be brought to the front, regardless of which document was active when the user opened the panel. When your application is inactive, its panels should be hidden. Panels should not be listed in the Window menu as documents, but you may put commands to show or hide all panels in the Window menu. Figure 14-38 shows examples of different styles of panels.

Figure 14-38 Examples of standard panels

A panel may have a title. An untitled panel should have a title-bar region for dragging it.

A user would never need to minimize a panel because it is displayed only when needed and disappears when its application is inactive. Therefore, the minimize button is always unavailable. A panel should have the close and zoom buttons or, if you don’t want users to be able to use the zoom button, only the close button. These configurations are shown in Figure 14-39.

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Figure 14-39 Panel controls

For information about designing the layout of a panel, see “Using Small and Mini Versions of Controls” (page 344).

Inspector Windows

An inspector is a panel that allows users to view the attributes of a selection. Inspectors (also called inspector windows) can also provide ways to modify these attributes. Pages, Keynote, and the Finder all make use of inspectors. Figure 14-40 shows an inspector window in Numbers.

224 Panels

2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.