Re: [Usability] Re: Button ordering
- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>
- To: Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>
- Cc: manaspa pacbell net, Joel Becker <jlbec evilplan org>, Alan Cox <alan redhat com>, usability gnome org, gtk-devel-list gnome org, gnome-hackers gnome org
- Subject: Re: [Usability] Re: Button ordering
- Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 17:12:23 -0800
On 03Nov2001 03:44PM (-0800), Seth Nickell wrote:
> > I feel compelled to point out that for consistency, it's not the
> > [ OK ] button you should be talking about. It should be the button
> > the user will usually want to push. e.g.
> >
> >
> > > | Are you sure you want to format your entire hard drive? |
> > > | |
> > > | [ Cancel ] [ OK ] |
> > > `--------------------------------------------------------------'
> > >
> >
> > "uh... ok." Would be a bad thing most of the time.
>
> First a minor caveat... the dialogue you list *is* ambiguous and could
> certainely lead to users formatting their hard drive when they don't
> want to. I think if the dialogue were done better it would be much safer
> (I explain some of the principles behind my redesign at the end, but
> basically this is just following the GUP dialogue guidelines):
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> | |
> | WARNING: Are you sure you want to format your hard |
> | drive? This will erase all data on the drive |
> | including documents and applications. |
> | |
> | [ Help ] [ Cancel Format ] [ Erase Hard Drive ] |
> `--------------------------------------------------------------'
If it were up to me, I would do it more like this:
------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| [alert] Are you sure you want to erase volume `My Disk'? |
| [icon ] This will permanently delete all files on `My Disk'. |
| |
| [ Help ] [ Cancel ] [ Erase ] |
`----------------------------------------------------------------'
Rationale:
* All-caps text like WARNING is hard on the eyes, looks ugly, and
needlessly alarms users. A suitable alert icon should be sufficient.
* Clarity is important, but so is brevity. I would suggest thinking
"what words can I take out?" when writing UI text, as the GDP does for
documentation. This goes double for command buttons.
* It's good to be specific in alerts, hence `My Disk' rather than just
"your hard drive", which there may well be more than one of. For GNOME
we may need to say something like "/usr/local" instead of "My Disk"
when no user-friendly volume name is available.
* The word `permanenetly' emphasizes that this is not like moving
files to the trash; it is not easily undoable.
You could even make the text a bit shorter still, "Are you sure you
want to permanently delete all files on `My Disk'?", but that wouldn't
match the "Erase" button very well.
BTW, can we include this set of three dialogs as a poor / better /
even better sequence of examples in the HIG Feedback chapter? :-)
Regards,
Maciej
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