On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 03:56:11PM -0400, Liam Quin wrote: > On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:33:56PM +0100, colin z robertson wrote: > > The idea that buttons which cause "destructive" actions should not be > > the default is truly horrible. I can think of nothing more infuriating > > than hitting the delete key and then having to press Alt-D rather than > > enter because the Delete confirmation button was not allowed to be the > > default. > > I can. You are typing away, and a dialogue comes up but you didn't notice > and continued typing your "pwd" command, hit return, and just glimpse a > window vanish... along with a file you didn't intend to delete. > > Unix users are very likely to be running more than one program at a time, > since the OS and the dominant windowing system (X) both encourage this. Uninvited dialogs are an interesting issue. In my own experience I've found them quite rare. They only appear when an error has occured, and it's usually in relation to network resources. The only one that I've encountered recently that gives any option other than "Ok" is GnomeICU's notification that a message has failed to get through. It might be reasonable to make the recommendation that the default action should not be destructive on uninvited dialogs, but I don't believe it makes sense for explicitly requested dialogs, which account for a very large proportion of the dialogs that the user will encounter. colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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