Dialog boxes, panels, and palettes

• Use of icons in dialog boxes is discouraged until guidelines on their use are available.
• When you lay out a dialog box, consider the reading direction for the language you're working in. Place buttons that affect the entire dialog box at the end of the reading path.

• There is no background notification--an inactive document cannot put up a dialog box until it is active.
• An open dialog box remains open when its associated document becomes inactive.
• An open dialog box closes when its associated document is closed.
• A dialog box is activated on a mouse click--if a command button is visible and the user clicks on it, that command will execute.
• Only one dialog is visible at a time for a document, unless that dialog results from answering a parent dialog box. (Displaying a child dialog box from a parent dialog box is strongly modal and is discouraged.)

Dialog positioning

If the dialog box is associated with a document, position it relative to that document: