CHAPTER 2
Container Views
Auxiliary Views 2-21
A status slip does not take the place of the Newton busy cursor, which
appears automatically at the top center of the screen when the system
temporarily cannot respond to user input (see “Automatic Busy Cursor” on
page 8-2). Your application should display a status slip when it begins an
operation that takes more than a few seconds to complete.
Title and Message 2
Either the title or the message text in a status slip should begin with a
gerund, such as preparing or sorting, and end with three periods (. . .), not a
single period, a hyphen, a dash, or an ellipsis character (…). For example,
when searching more than one application, the built-in Find service displays
“Find” on the first line and a message similar to “Searching in Names...” (the
message is continuously updated with the name of the application currently
being searched). Other applications use the title and message text differently.
When receiving e-mail, for example, the first line could display the current
phase of the operation and the second line could display specific information
being used in that phase. Figure 2-20 illustrates.
The title should be in the bold style of the system font, and the message
should be in the plain style of the system font. The icon size should correspond
to the title height. On an Apple MessagePad, use 9-point text for the title and
9-point text for the message.