Re: How to avoid a Windows interface on OS X?
Re: How to avoid a Windows interface on OS X?
- Subject: Re: How to avoid a Windows interface on OS X?
- From: Pete Yandell <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 01:36:39 +1000
Wow, this has sparked quite a debate! I'm going to weigh in with my
two cents worth as I think a few important points have been skipped
over.
First, as has already been quoted from the application UI guidelines:
"The default button for dismissing a dialog should go in the
lower-right corner."
Now this makes sense if you combine it with another rule from the UI
guidelines: "Button names should be verbs that describe the action
performed..."
Example of doing it right:
I have a dialog to confirm the deletion of something in my user
interface. I have a default button labelled "Delete" in the bottom
right and a "Cancel" button to the left of that. When the dialog
appears the user will immediately look in that bottom right corner at
the big blue button (because that's where they always look for the
default button in OS X.) They will see the word "Delete" and either
think "Yeah, that's what I want to do" or "Hold on, what am I deleting?
Better read the rest of the dialog."
Yes, users do get into the habit of pressing return without reading the
text of the dialog which is why you need that one word in the bottom
right to be descriptive...it may be the only thing they see that makes
them pause. "OK" is very rarely a good thing to put on that button
because it tells you nothing about what the button does.
As to whether the "Delete" button or the "Cancel" button should be the
default, it depends on the particular situation. For formatting hard
drives I'd say "Cancel" should probably be the default. For deleting a
bunch of files it should probably be "Delete". It depends on: the
destructiveness of the action, how often the action is used and the
user interface that leads to performing the action in the first place.
(Note that ideally you want to make the action reversible, either by
undo or some other mechanism, and not put up a dialog at all.)
Pete Yandell
http://pete.yandell.com/
On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 03:10 AM, Stiphane Sudre wrote:
>
Problem:
>
>
You want a dialog to have a standard alert sheet/dialog to have a OK
>
and Cancel button.
>
You want the Cancel button to be the default button.
>
You don't want to have a Windows-like interface like in iCal when you
>
delete a Calendar (i.e. the OK button is on the left, the Cancel
>
button on the right).
>
>
Question:
>
>
How can you do this with the standard Alert Sheet/Dialog APIs?
>
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Is the only solution to use a custom dialog/sheet?
>
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