Getting back to the close button discussion...

First time I deal with the new UI, it seemed pretty logic to me, that clicking outside of the dialog will make it disappear, but since I'm a HCI enthusiastic and so much people here have complains about the lack of close button, I decided to expose the UI to regular computer users.

I asked five friends (windows and mac user's) and three familiars (ubuntu user's - chat, web and office only), to test the Fremantle UI. Just a small test in order to expose them to the lack of close button.

Five of them, used the UI without any complains, and don't even blink when they have to hit outside the dialog to close it. The other three made me two different question:

"Where is the close button ?" and "Should I click outside the dialog to close it ?"

But I didn't have enough time to answer, because they actually close the dialog without my help.

Note that none of this people are programmers/geeks/power users, after the test I asked them: "Why do you clicked outside the dialog to close it ?", and the answers was mainly this two:

"The dialog seems like a pop-up to me, so I clicked outside of it, in order to close it ".

"Why not, when I have layered windows in my desktop and I want to switch the focus to another window, I click in the window that I want".

So in my opinion we can't call this a "Norman interface", I think the majority of the users will learn how to close the dialog in seconds, and as was said before it's a one time learning experience.

My 2 cents :P.