Re: [Usability] Wording of Error Dialogs

[Sebastian Heinlein <liste pimpzkru de>]

Am Mi, den 23.06.2004 um 12:48 Uhr -0400 schrieb Bryan Clark:
> On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 11:56 +0200, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> > I plan to do a major rewording and unification of the error messages of
> > a project that I am working on. Since we want to be conform with the
> > HIG, I would like to know if there is a policy on this.
> 
> As far as HIG Guidelines go...
> 
> Here is where the HIG recommends language for errors:
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/language-errors.html
> 
> Since these are probably alerts you'll want to read the alerts section
> too:
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/windows-alert.html

There is no unified punctuation in the primary texts.  So I thought that
the actual texts in the dialogs are just place holders. Should the
primary text end with a point or not? Or why should the primary text of
an error or warning box not contain one? Shouldn't the string "/floppy"
also be put between quotation marks?

All previous mentioned formulations can be found in GNOME apps.

> Here's a recommendation for error dialogs that I would give.
> 
> >From previous email suggestion [1] that I really like, don't call these
> 'Error Messages'.  Instead call them 'Solution Messages', this way you
> can help your users to fix the problems instead of just turning your
> application into 'Captain Obvious'.

Sorry, I should have mentioned, that I was talking about the primary
texts, only.

Regards,

Sebastian

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