If an operation or action is to happen immediately
after the activation of a choice, provide an action choice.
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When a user activates an action choice, immediately
begin to perform the action.
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Provide access to all action choices through menus,
push buttons, or both.
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Do not use an action choice to request further parameters
in a secondary window; use a dialog choice instead.
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Do not use an action choice to temporarily display
a list or menu; use a cascading choice instead.
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If an action choice can possibly refer to more than
one control in a window, use the following rules to determine which
control is affected:
If the action can be applied to the
control that has focus emphasis, apply it to that control.
For example, if the focus is in a text-entry field and the
user uses a shortcut key to invoke the Paste choice, paste to the
text-entry field that has focus.
If the action operates on a selection, apply the
action to the primary selection when the following is true:
The primary selection is in the window
No editing operation has been done in any other
control in the window since it was selected
If the control with interacted emphasis is in the
window and the action can be applied to it, apply it.
The control with interacted emphasis is the last editable
control the user interacted with, so, for example, if the user last
interacted with a text-entry field, paste to that field.
If the window has a main control and the action
can be applied to it, apply it.
For example, a drawing program might have a large drawing
area and a small text-entry field for entering identification numbers.
The drawing area is the main control; if the previous cases do not
apply, paste to it.
If none of the previous cases is true, then invoking
the action has no effect except for invoking a warning message.