Comments on: Cancelling “Yes or No” http://www.allenpike.com/2008/cancelling-yes-or-no/ Allen Pike on gidgets and gazmos. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:30:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: tewha.net » Blog Archive » Yes/no http://www.allenpike.com/2008/cancelling-yes-or-no/comment-page-1/#comment-1189 tewha.net » Blog Archive » Yes/no Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:03:51 +0000 http://www.antipode.ca/?p=305#comment-1189 [...] Pike posted on the silliness of Yes/No and OK/Cancel a few days ago. Today, I saw the best example ever of poorly-named buttons. This is pretty typical [...] [...] Pike posted on the silliness of Yes/No and OK/Cancel a few days ago. Today, I saw the best example ever of poorly-named buttons. This is pretty typical [...]

]]> By: Steven Fisher http://www.allenpike.com/2008/cancelling-yes-or-no/comment-page-1/#comment-1178 Steven Fisher Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:36:47 +0000 http://www.antipode.ca/?p=305#comment-1178 I'm impressed, Bruce. You got through a comment on Windodws Yes/No Abort/Retry/Fail insanity without mentioning "(Press Retry to debug.)" in Visual Studio. :) I’m impressed, Bruce. You got through a comment on Windodws Yes/No Abort/Retry/Fail insanity without mentioning “(Press Retry to debug.)” in Visual Studio. :)

]]> By: Bruce http://www.allenpike.com/2008/cancelling-yes-or-no/comment-page-1/#comment-1177 Bruce Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:27:20 +0000 http://www.antipode.ca/?p=305#comment-1177 The problem is at least partly rooted in the APIs, which form the basis of developer's imagination (APIs are stronger than documentation). Win32, for example, has a trivial API for message boxes with yes/no, ok/cancel, and abort/retry/ignore. The APIs gave birth to thousands of unimaginative dialog boxes on the platforms, despite a good recommendation in the platform docs to do otherwise. Making bad UIs easy is a core part of the problem. Really, the API writers should expressly disallow horrible dialogs, or make it easier to make good ones. The problem is at least partly rooted in the APIs, which form the basis of developer’s imagination (APIs are stronger than documentation). Win32, for example, has a trivial API for message boxes with yes/no, ok/cancel, and abort/retry/ignore. The APIs gave birth to thousands of unimaginative dialog boxes on the platforms, despite a good recommendation in the platform docs to do otherwise. Making bad UIs easy is a core part of the problem.

Really, the API writers should expressly disallow horrible dialogs, or make it easier to make good ones.

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