The Copy file dialog of Win 7 constitutes an approach to presenting One of N options choices to users. This dialog, however, has been accused of being too hard to scan, and lacking click affordance.
Another approach is that of Apple OSX. The advantage here is the improved scannability and click affordance. However, it doesn't provide room for descriptions/meta data and it doesn't scale well.
I'm aware that the typical UI controls for presenting One of N options choices are radio buttons, however, they occur to me as being a little archaic in this context. Furthermore, they don't provide the option to be preselected (unless a dialog confirm button is available, making it a two step process if the user needs another option than what is default selected). Here's a mockup of this issue:
I imagine that clicking either a radio button, an option heading or option description selects the pertinent option and closes the dialog.
The problem with the left dialog is the lacking affordance when no radio button is selected and the resulting missed opportunity to present a default option.
The problem with the right dialog is forcing the user (in case s/he is satisfied with Option Dolor) into clicking the Dolor Option (which goes against the standard behaviour of radio buttons).
My question is thus:
- How should I design such a choose One of N options dialog when I want to avoid confirm buttons?