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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: RFC: Message Box issues
From:       Lubos Lunak <l.lunak () suse ! cz>
Date:       2004-10-04 14:42:30
Message-ID: 200410041642.30983.l.lunak () suse ! cz
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On Monday 04 of October 2004 13:30, Jarosław Staniek wrote:
> Hello,
>
> There are two issues:
> 1. Assume you've got a question message
>
>     "Do you want to format this partition?"
>               {{Yes}} {No}
>
> We can agree, this is really a mix of warning and question. Currently with
> KDE, it's only required to blindly press Enter key to answer "Yes" for this
> question because it's highlighted as default. (I've got other cases similar
> to this within my own application, like Kexi "Do you want to remove this
> database"). Any of such messages are dangeruos if user is too lazy/bored to
> think twice :) At least from my experience user lazy/bored users do exist
> and so quite often.
> The proposal is to allow programmers to set {{No}} button by default for
> such cases. This was even already implemented few months before (called
> Dangerous option for KMessageBox), but now it's removed.

 Actually one of the KMessageBox functions does this, warningYesNo(). And I 
find that really annoying: I start action XYZ, and get a dialog saying 
"Warning, XYZ will do this and that. Yes/No?". Pressing Esc cancels. Pressing 
Enter cancels. No simple way to confirm. Especially entertaining in the case 
XYZ is something as dangerous and uncommon as overwriting a file or similar.

 I don't know how about others, but I've learnt Esc in dialogs means "no, 
cancel, bail out", and Enter means "yes, done, continue, finish". Why should 
Enter bail out?

 I still fail to see who should be actually the user this feature tries to 
protect.
- the mostly clueless user ? - they use mouse, and probably don't even know 
they can just tap Enter or Esc
- the stupid user who "unintentionally" triggers a potentionally dangerous 
action and then ignores the dialog with the big exclamantion mark and taps 
Enter? They should get what they deserve, because there're smart enough to 
screw themselves in other ways anyway.
- or does Kexi randomly offer the user options like dumping all their work?

> 2. Pressing letters as keyboard shortcuts for message boxes. Currently e.g.
> for buttons
>             {{Yes}} {No}
>
> there are keyboard shortcuts : Alt+Y, and Alt+N.
> The proposal is to add possibility (by default) for presing Y and N keys
> (accordingly for Yes and No answer), Alt+ shortcut could remain of course.
>
> Current behaviour:
> - is not consistent with Qt-only applications (where Y and N, etc. work)
> - is not consistent with windows and MacOSX applications behaviour (where Y
> and N, etc. work) and thus is reported as a reason for annoyance by many
> former/current users of these

 I think it's much simpler to use arrows+space than this, especially if the 
dialogs don't have Yes/No but wording like Save/Discard. But I don't think 
this should be a problem to add.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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