Alright, Internet, listen up!
Modal dialog boxes are bad UI. We knew that they were bad UI twenty years ago.
Do we really need to re-implement modal dialog boxes, inside web pages, in Javascript, in order to re-discover this fact?
I’m not going to name names. You know who you are. You’re on my list!
Not The User's Fault 
October 28, 2008 at 3:30 am
Actually, a concrete example wouldn’t be amiss here, even if you don’t name names. Certainly, popup ‘windows’ are becoming fairly common in webapps these days, but can you give an example of what you’re seeing “modal dialog boxes” being used for?
October 28, 2008 at 5:16 am
http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/1047
October 28, 2008 at 7:35 am
I couldn’t agree more to that!
Although I don’t know what’s on you’re list, I have a list myself…
October 28, 2008 at 9:25 am
There was an interesting post about modal dialogs on the Signal vs. Noise blog: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1149-modal-overlays-beyond-the-dialog-box
Could you comment on that?
October 28, 2008 at 10:00 am
Well at least they are tab-local instead of window-global….
*hint* *hint* 🙂
October 28, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I share your pain… God, how I hate modal dialog boxes!
October 28, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Wait… is this a trick? Ubiquity is a form of a modal dialog box.
October 29, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Actually, Ubiquity isn’t a modal dialogue. If you click outside the box that shows up, Ubiquity closes. You don’t have to close the box inside of it.
October 29, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Ryan,
It is a modal dialog box that has a very large transparent cancel button and the enter key as the OK button. If you click a hyperlink on a page you close Ubiquity and don’t go to the link. It’s better, but it’s still a modal dialog box.
December 19, 2008 at 6:42 pm
For a example, how about the, fucking, Google who supposedly has the world’s SMARTEST people working for them.
And yeah, Ubiquity is a modal dialog. But it’s also a prototype, so maybe they are going to make it non-modal some day?