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List:       kde-look
Subject:    RE: Standard questions and answers
From:       "Glen Parker" <glenebob () nwlink ! com>
Date:       1999-09-15 10:17:57
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OK and Cancel are nice standard answers that are very obvious.  Sometimes,
instead of making the possible answers better fit the question, it makes
more sense to make the question fit well-defined answers.  For example, I
often ask something like
"What you are about to do could cause a temporal distortion.  Choose 'OK' to
continue."
The knee-jerk reaction is to hit 'Cancel', and it works.

I like to use the Yes/No questions only when OK/Cancel makes no sense
whatever, like
"Would you like a beer with that pizza?"
;-)

The difference I think is that on the one hand, the user has asked to do
something...  You aren't asking if they want to quit, because (duh), they
just said that!  It's a warning and a chance to back down.  Yes/No only
makes sense when you are asking the user if they'd like to do something they
*didn't* ask about.  So, 'No' means "No, I don't want to do that, stupid",
while 'Cancel' means "Oh, well, forget it then."

"Would you like a beer with that pizza?" -> "Yes/No"

as apposed to

"You're going to get a beer if you order pizza." -> "OK/Cancel"

Glen

> 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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