Re: [Usability] Re: Button ordering

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 03Nov2001 03:44PM (-0800), Seth Nickell wrote:
> > I feel compelled to point out that for consistency, it's not the
> > [ OK ] button you should be talking about. It should be the button
> > the user will usually want to push. e.g.
> > 
> > 
> > > |    Are you sure you want to format your entire hard drive?   | 
> > > |                                                              |
> > > |                                        [ Cancel ] [   OK   ] | 
> > > `--------------------------------------------------------------'
> > > 
> > 
> > "uh... ok." Would be a bad thing most of the time.
> 
> First a minor caveat... the dialogue you list *is* ambiguous and could
> certainely lead to users formatting their hard drive when they don't
> want to. I think if the dialogue were done better it would be much safer
> (I explain some of the principles behind my redesign at the end, but
> basically this is just following the GUP dialogue guidelines):
> 
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------
>  |                                                              |
>  |    WARNING: Are you sure you want to format your hard        |
>  |             drive? This will erase all data on the drive     |
>  |             including documents and applications.            |
>  |                                                              |
>  | [ Help ]              [ Cancel Format ] [ Erase Hard Drive ] | 
>  `--------------------------------------------------------------'

If it were up to me, I would do it more like this:

------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                |
| [alert]   Are you sure you want to erase volume `My Disk'?     |
| [icon ]   This will permanently delete all files on `My Disk'. |
|                                                                |
| [ Help ]                                  [ Cancel ] [ Erase ] | 
`----------------------------------------------------------------'

Rationale:

* All-caps text like WARNING is hard on the eyes, looks ugly, and
needlessly alarms users. A suitable alert icon should be sufficient.

* Clarity is important, but so is brevity. I would suggest thinking
"what words can I take out?" when writing UI text, as the GDP does for
documentation. This goes double for command buttons.

* It's good to be specific in alerts, hence `My Disk' rather than just
"your hard drive", which there may well be more than one of. For GNOME
we may need to say something like "/usr/local" instead of "My Disk"
when no user-friendly volume name is available.

* The word `permanenetly' emphasizes that this is not like moving
files to the trash; it is not easily undoable.

You could even make the text a bit shorter still, "Are you sure you
want to permanently delete all files on `My Disk'?", but that wouldn't
match the "Erase" button very well.


BTW, can we include this set of three dialogs as a poor / better /
even better sequence of examples in the HIG Feedback chapter? :-)


Regards,

Maciej