Re: [Usability]HIG should advise against Yes/No in confirmation alerts

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 12:08, John Levon wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 11:33:20AM -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> 
> > The HIG does cover this (last time I read thru it, anyways, which wasn't
> > long ago) - you should _never_ say "we should do this action, is that
> > ok?", but instead state "there is this condition/state, what do you want
> > to do?" and put the actions in the buttons.
> 
> Well, the example dialogs do not do this for the Primary Text.
> 
> > The reasoning is pretty good.  The problem is that the meaning of Yes
> > and No is wholly dependent on the way the question is phrased.  If you
> > have "You have unsaved changes, save first? [Yes][No]" in one app, and
> > "You have unsaved changes, quit anyway? [Yes][No]" in another, the user
> 
> Hold on a minute, I wasn't arguing for using Yes/No, I thought we'd
> already agreed that sucked :)

Right.  Poor example.  ^,^  The problem is, if you ask a question, your
button have to be answers to make sense.  "Save your changes?" implies
I'm able to answer Ya Sure or No Way.  You could label the buttons as
actions, but then you have all sorts of weird linguistic issues that
irritate people like me to no end.  ;-)

> 
> I'm asking for a rationale for the "never ask a question" statement.
> 
> regards,
> john
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