Re: Default button in dialogs

[Michael Rogers <mrogers cs ucl ac uk>]

On Thu May 10 2001, Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero wrote:
> Please read http://www.delanet.com/~jkmissig/interface-guide.txt, it
> proposes Enter in smarter way than OK (mainly cos OK must be avoided
> if possible ;] ).

I've looked at it, and I have a couple of comments:

1) I don't want to stir up too much of a hornet's nest, but are OK and 
Cancel *really* that bad? Cancel is a verb, so I don't see the problem 
with it - it's more descriptive of what's going to happen than Close. OK 
is not a verb, but then the OK button often represents a response (eg "I 
acknowledge the message") rather than a command (eg "Save and exit"). 
While commands should be verbs, is there any reason why responses should 
be verbs? Answer yes or no.  ;)

ii) At the moment Close looks like Cancel (it uses a similar icon). If 
it's going to mean "accept the current settings and close the dialog", 
maybe it should be called "Accept" and/or use a similar icon to OK?

c) Could "in which case the least destructive action should be given the 
default Enter binding" be changed to "in which case the least 
destructive *affirmative* action should be given the default Enter 
binding"? (To be consistent with the idea that Esc always undoes and 
Enter always confirms.)

> PS: * I have not used Windows seriously in along time, but I guess it
> will be Enter to format, then Enter again to get rid off "Are you
> sure? Yes / No" ("sure of what?") and then start formating, which is
> not good. ;]

But if you used verbs on all the buttons, it would be F for Format 
and then F again to get rid of "What do you want to do? [Format] 
[Cancel]".  ;p

Michael