[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-usability
Subject:    default action in "dangerous" dialogs
From:       Lubos Lunak <l.lunak () suse ! cz>
Date:       2003-10-30 12:58:57
[Download RAW message or body]


 Dear KDE usability team,

 or this time, it should be rather KDE unusability team. Guess what just 
happened to me. I created an icon on desktop to test one bugreport, and after 
I was done, I wanted to get rid of it. I managed to do it already on the 
third attempt. Isn't that great?

 As somebody who has quite high opinion about his intelligence, and definitely 
isn't one of those dumb mouse-only users, I of course wanted to delete the 
icon by selecting it, hitting Del, and hitting Enter. Only after repeating it 
second time and seeing nothing still happened, I realized this box under my 
table apparently thinks I'm a complete idiot, and wants me to confirm that 
I'm sure that I'm sure. Just triggering the action and confirming the dialog 
doesn't seem to be enough. 

 So I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your work, and while 
writing this, I'm upgrading my KDE to TWM and xterm.

 Regards,

 yours Joe "not dumb" User


 Now, seriously. This is unacceptable. There are basically two kinds of 
people:
- the "not dumb" ones, which from time to time use keyboard, and are aware of 
the fact that hitting the Delete key usually results in deleting something - 
these people not only don't need this change, they are also going to be 
highly annoyed by this change
- the others (not necessarily dumb, but simply not using keyboard so much - I 
have yet to see an inexperienced user using keyboard for something more than 
entering text, but I can understand there will be experienced people who 
prefer mouse) - they use mouse, changing something affecting only keyboard 
doesn't have any effect on them

 In other words, the Enter key confirms dialogs. If somebody requests to have 
hid head shot off, and then confirms that they really want it, they should 
either have it shot off, or they should be closed somewhere away from normal 
people. If somebody tries to delete a file, confirms doing so and is 
surprised later, like bug #59899, maybe they should get a babysitter, or 
start using GNOME. As one person reportedly said,  "a gui can protect you 
from doing a dumb operation once. but it cannot protect you to do two dumb 
operations in a row".

 Could somebody explain why was that bugreport obeyed, instead of closing it 
as INVALID? I even noticed this "feature" has found its way into 
KMessageBox :-/, and at the present time, still upset by this, I'm highly 
tempted to dump it.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SuSE CR, s.r.o.  e-mail: l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org
Drahobejlova 27  tel: +420 2 9654 2373
190 00 Praha 9   fax: +420 2 9654 2374
Czech Republic   http://www.suse.cz/

_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@mail.kde.org
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]