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Comment by ralphleon | Hacker News Reader

"Stackable"

After checking out the live demo, I have no idea how "stacking" modals could make a good user interface.

I have found one case where it makes sense. Say you have a modal popup with an 'editor' widget in it. If that widget then needs to popup another modal for adding a link, it makes sense. Here is a screenshot of what I'm talking about...

http://www.evernote.com/shard/s178/sh/003f6b5e-0869-44af-ab9...

This is also using the bootstrap modal solution referenced in this article. Redactor is the editor widget.

That's a pretty good example, but why is description even a modal? It looks so content rich, seems like it deserves the full screen.

True, I could resize the modal to be a lot larger, but it hasn't been a big issue so far. I do like it in a modal because it allows me to enable/disable the Save button depending on if things change (although this doesn't work now that I've switched to Redactor since they don't support figuring out that info yet... feature request has been submitted). All of my UX does editing of form fields in a modal, for consistency, it is nice to keep things the same.

Maybe they can't. But it's nice that the functionality exists so that I can make that decision for myself.

It's a very common pattern in desktop software (complicated config panels, for instance). I don't think that makes it "good" but at least it's well understood. It's dumb that most existing modals can't do it.

It's not dumb if it's broken. What's dumb is that current complicated desktop solutions (whichever you talk about) haven't figured out a better way.

Just because you can get away with doing something poorly, doesn't mean you should.

I think we agree, at least in principle. Bootstrap is meant to facilitate quick prototyping, though--quick prototypes for complicated flows will include sub-optimal UI.

Desktop solutions I'm talking about: anything in Windows control panel (people still use that OS, God help them), any configuration panel in Ubuntu (go modify your network settings, for example), all sorts of horrible-to-use and yet somehow magically-useful simulation/CAD programs, etc. (A common theme here is that Apple software and most software created for Macs does not have this UI pattern, because it is indeed suboptimal. The rest of the world still sees it a lot.)

I think it's a terrible UX the way it's presented, but there is definitely a use-case for the functionality.

Say you have a modal that contains a step-by-step process. Now you can load multiple modals, and dismiss them one at a time. To a user, it will look like s/he is moving through the steps.

Is this a good use? Ehh...maybe not, but it's possible. Just brainstorming here.

It is a perfect use case for adding a newly created category to a post.

Similarly for adding any foreign key item which could be multiple levels.

Django admin does this now by opening a "new" in a different window.

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