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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Standard questions and answers
From:       Derek <fountai () hursley ! ibm ! com>
Date:       1999-09-15 8:43:10
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Is it possible to mention something in the new guidleines about giving
the user sensible options to answer questions asked in dialogs? It seems
obvious, but if you ask a question like "Are you sure you want to do
this?" the available options should be "Yes" or "No", NOT "OK" or
"Cancel" or anything else.

This is still a remarkably common mistake. I will always remember this
spectacular example from a Word Processor on my old Atari ST: You hit
the application exit button with unsaved text, and it asks:

   -----------------------------------------------------
   You have unsaved data. Are you sure you want to exit?

                      Quit    Cancel
   -----------------------------------------------------

Can we pin down some rules here? Dialogs should ask questions and offer
Yes or No answers unless there is a good reason to phrase the question
some other way. (There will be many good reasons of course, the point is
that the programmer should think in Yes or No terms first.)

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