Re: [Usability] Wording of Error Dialogs

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 18:50, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:

> 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?

My personal feeling is that it shouldn't... I like to equate the primary
text to a newspaper headline.  The HIG should certainly be more specific
here though (filing a bug would help us remember to fix this).

> Shouldn't the string "/floppy"
> also be put between quotation marks?

Again the HIG probably ought to say something here.  I'd probably say
that filenames and pathnames should be quoted when used in
normally-terminated sentences, otherwise it can be hard to tell whether
the punctuation is part of the filename or not.  For primary alert text
though, if we agree that there should be no punctuation at the end, then
I think quotes can make it look a bit clunky.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems