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How do I decide whether to use hot text?

You should consider using hot text when:

• You want to make additional information (such as a definition or expert-user shortcuts) available, but it won't fit on the panel and not every user will want to see it; and
• The information is associated with a particular word or phrase on the panel.

If you want to make information available from a panel, but that information is associated with the panel as a whole rather than any particular word, use a button instead.

Users expect to get information, not perform an action, when clicking hot text. So it's probably not a good idea to use hot text to execute a script, unless all the script does is present information. For example, you might create an AppleScript to open a SimpleText document that contains a diagram, and trigger it when the user clicks hot text. Even though this is a script, from the user's perspective it's simply showing additional information, so it doesn't cause confusion.

How do I show the user which text is hot?

Jeanne A. E. DeVoto jaed@jaedworks.com
Copyright © 1996 Jeanne A. E. DeVoto