Re: few things

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jan 26, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Kristoffer Lundén wrote:
>
> On Jan 26, 2008 12:03 PM, Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net> wrote:
>>
>> Am Freitag, den 25.01.2008, 13:00 -0800 schrieb Junior Junior:
>>>
>>> 2. I have a KBS-26 keyboard
>>> (http://www.a4tech.com/en/images/products/Accessary/KBS-26-1B.gif) 
>>> and my 'delete' key is near the 'up' key. So, some times I hit it
>>> accidentally. Why there is no dialog box for confirmation?
>>
>> because this is not windows, and because you can always go to the 
>> trash bin and undelete it again. :-)
>
> Amen to that, it's really super-annoying to confirm every little
> deletion on Windows. Though I sometimes wish for a GMail-like
> one-level undo in Nautilus: "5 files moved to Trash [Undo]" somewhere
> at the top.
> ...

When people too often make a mistake in using an interface, there are
three ways to address the problem: (1) make it harder to do, (2) make
it easier to undo, and (3) lessen the harm from doing it.

"Move to Trash" itself is a good example of #3, since it's less harmful
than deleting irrevocably. Introducing an Undo function in Nautilus
would be a good example of #2, and so would a Restore function in the
Trash itself.

But #1 is still important, because it is still alarming for a big
mistake to be easy, regardless of whether undo is easy. A cliff should
still have a fence at the top, even if there is a trampoline at the
bottom. Many designers (such as those who work on Windows, apparently)
think that a confirmation alert is the best way of making something
harder to do, but they're wrong, because people habitually ignore
confirmation alerts. Better ways include putting something in a submenu
instead of a main menu, putting a separator between it and other menu
items or toolbar buttons, and increasing the number of keys in its
keyboard equivalent.

For an example of what not to do, see Thunderbird, where the keyboard
equivalent for "Send" is Ctrl+Enter. This combination is prone to
accidents, so Thunderbird offers a confirmation alert when you press it.
People detest the confirmation alert, so Thunderbird makes it optional
("Confirm when using keyboard shortcut to send message"). But this
doesn't solve the problem: it's not that some people make the mistake
often and others never do, but that many people make the mistake
*occasionally*.

Other mailers solve the same problem in a better way: instead of having
a two-key combo for "Send", they have a three-key combo. Perhaps
Nautilus could learn from this in the case of "Move to Trash": instead
of having a one-key equivalent, have a two-key equivalent.

-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/