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Bug 11558

Summary: [Preferences] Preference Page Apply buttons should be disabled until a preference is changed.
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Duong Nguyen <duongn>
Component: UIAssignee: Platform-UI-Inbox <Platform-UI-Inbox>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P4 CC: n.a.edgar
Version: 2.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows 2000   
Whiteboard:

Description Duong Nguyen CLA 2002-03-18 11:20:13 EST 
Many preference pages in Eclipse have Apply buttons.  When you open the 
preferences dialogs they all come up enabled, but there is nothing to apply.  
They should be disabled (on each page) until a setting is changed.  For an 
example of the desired behaviour: look at the properties of the windows desktop 
(right click on the desktop and select properties).

To Reproduce:

1. Open Eclipse
2. Select Workbench->Preferences
3. Open the Workbench Preferences
4. Select Appearance

Results: The Apply button is enabled and shouldn’t be.
Comment 1 Kevin Haaland CLA 2002-05-01 18:40:15 EDT 
This would be a good enhancement.
Comment 2 Lynne Kues CLA 2002-09-17 14:38:04 EDT 
Question of how to track the changes on a preference page.  If a preference 
page uses field editors for all of its fields, could automatically track 
changes.
Comment 3 Lynne Kues CLA 2002-09-20 16:40:01 EDT 
The Apply button is also used in Property Pages and for consistency anything 
that is done for the Preferences Dialog should be done for Property Pages.
Comment 4 Lynne Kues CLA 2002-10-30 16:37:24 EST 
The only way to support this feature is to track changes that occur to the 
fields on the Preferences/Properties pages.  The framework does not require a 
page to "register" its fields, so changes to the framework alone will not be 
enough to provide this capability.  Every property and preference page would 
have to change to either use field editors or some other mechanism for 
registering the items to watch on a page.  There is really no other way to do 
this and it should be an all or nothing thing - having some pages that 
enable/disable the Apply button and other pages that don't would be 
inconsistent and having some fields on a page enable/disable the Apply button, 
while other fields don't would also be confusing.

Nick I want to mark this as P4 or WONTFIX.
Comment 5 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-11-01 11:27:54 EST 
Let's mark it as P4.  We should look at what support we can provide to allow 
preference pages to do this properly.  We could at least make our pages 
enable/disable the Apply button appropriately, and make recommendations to 
others.  Yes, there would be some inconsistency, but we shouldn't let 
inconsistencies keep us from making usability improvements.  If enough pages 
start following the convention, and some pages don't follow it, we can argue 
that these other pages simply have bugs that need to be fixed.  As long as we 
give them some (hopefully easy) way to fix it.
Comment 6 Nick Edgar CLA 2003-02-07 12:50:25 EST 
Defer
Comment 7 DJ Houghton CLA 2004-11-09 15:17:58 EST 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 7819 ***