Re: UI/String Review - Day 1

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org>]

Hm, my gut feeling says the best way to resolve this is to keep the 
destructive as a default on the dialog, then open a second dialog saying

"Do you really REALLY want to do this ???"

and give them YES or NO, but default to NO.

> Since most end-users just skip dialogs as fast as they can (I've read
> this in several ui articles on this last years, things like: just
> pressing enter without reading, etc etc...) destructive actions should
> never be the default button.

Since they invoked a dialog to request that specific destructive action I 
don't see the point.  You're forcing users wanting to get on with the task 
at hand to switch off the safety net that is the dialog.

> Think rm -i.... it asks you weather you want to remove that file. Does
> it default to yes? No, why?

for me, it makes a big difference since I didn't ask for the rm -i with my 
mouse.  If I use the mouse to bring up a dialog and Enter to confirm, then 
I want Enter to confirm the action that I just requested.

I think regular users just keep using the mouse to either confirm or deny 
in most cases, so they would only visually use the default action (by 
seeing it being depressed or something).  If they don't, but use the 
keyboard because it makes them get on with their work quicker, I think it 
can be safe to assume they know the consequence of choosing the default 
action since they just requested it.

The only time it could ever be a problem that the default action is set to 
destructive is when you follow each dialog activation by an automatic 
press of the Enter button, and in that case you probably have something 
wrong with your hand-hand coordination.

I think that setting destructive to the default allows people to get on 
with their work and will not make the users get annoyed because the dialog 
gets in their way, causing them to shut off the dialog and then really 
getting into trouble because of bad mouse clicks !

As you said, since you use rm you probably never got annoyed by the dialog 
trying to lure you away from what you wanted to do.  You should try to 
remove lots of files without using rm for a whole week.  I think you'd see 
the point.

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