Re: Default button in dialogs

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom infernal-iceberg com>]

mrogers cs ucl ac uk (2001-05-10 at 0328.26 +0100):
> 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.  ;)

Tell me what you understand better:

1. Blah blha blah blah blha blha blahahaha. Yes / No

2. Blah blha blah blah blha blha blahahaha. OK / Cancel

3. Blah blha blah blah blha blha blahahaha. Overwrite / Cancel

In 1 and 2 you have to read and understand the phrase, every time,
otherwise you can end doing the wrong thing. In 3, the phrase can be
read to get more info, like the file name. So phrase and buttons give
info, not just one of them.

OK, Yes / No and other have places where they can be used, but if they
match. The best example I can think is responses dialogs, but they
normally do not have Cancel, just OK, cos if they have both, then they
can be taken as commands or they are plainly wrong, imagine "Connected
to server: OK / Cancel" (note the "ed").

> ii) At the moment Close looks like Cancel (it uses a similar icon). If 

Icons, hehehehe. First problem I found when talking with other people
is the confusion (I do not use them, jsut the texts, no confusions for
me).

> 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?

Yep, it could be Accept.

> 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.)

A bit or full, it is destructive.

> 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

Yeah, and why not do a loop based in a random 64 bit int, so user has
to confirm that many times? ;P

GSR