[haiku-development] Re: Variety of quit/save dialogs
- From: Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:51:01 +0100
Hi,
Am 16.12.2012 um 11:17 schrieb Humdinger <humdingerb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Turns out my +1 showering soon fizzled out to a light splatter...
>
> On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:20:54 +0100 pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>> Ingo Weinhold wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I don't find "Don't save" that obvious either. "Discard" more
>>>> clearly
>>>> indicates that this is a destructive choice. Maybe just make that
>>>> more
>>>> verbose: "Discard unsaved data".
>>
>> A good compromise would be "Discard changes". But then we'd need
>> "Save
>> changes", and "Exit application" buttons, for symmetry. That seems
>> natural
>> : two of the buttons apply to changes, while the third apply to the
>> application. Explicitly stating it make everything clearer, but it's
>> a bit
>> verbose.
>
> I don't like making button labels any longer than necessary. While
> things like "Yes", "No" or an "OK" for a destructive action should be
> avoided, I think we should go for one word if possible. It's instantly
> taken in with one glance and get easily recognized, if that kind of
> dialog always comes with the buttons Cancel/Discard/Save. Otherwise
> developers may come up with app-specific wording like "Save document",
> "Save image", "Save video" etc.
>
> Who knew that the good old "Cancel" button needed further explanation?
> I wouldn't have expected that "Don't save" were more ambiguous beside a
> "Save" button than "Discard" either, but I bet I can adjust to that
> quite easily.
I've also made the experience that this particular thing can be tricky.
First of all, I agree with this button order and labeling:
[Discard] [Cancel] [Save]
From right to left this is in increasingly destructive order. It is less
confusing for users to have a "Cancel" button versus a "Don't quit" button. It
requires less thinking. Whatever caused the intimidating dialog, "Cancel" will
take you back to when all was good.
There was actually something in the BeBook and maybe it's in our HIG that the
order should be according to destructiveness. In my initial version of
WonderBrush, I had "Cancel" right-most, since I considered it least
destructive, but users found if more convenient (and more in line with other
BeOS apps) to make ENTER save the document. I.e. Cmd-Q + ENTER as a quick way
to quit and save.
I just wanted to share that the alert itself may need more explanation of what
is going on to the user, depending on the complexity of saving stuff in the
application. For example, users do confuse "export" and "save". Yes, they may
think that exporting a multi-layer graphics file to PNG is the same as saving
it in the native format. Gimp did some recent changes in this regard, only
native Gimp files are considered "saving".
Depending on whether the user already exported the document, and did or did not
save the document in native format, the wording on the dialog should be
different to explain to the user what exactly will not be saved. For example,
if the document was never saved nor exported, "Delete" like in recent MacOS
versions may be a good alternative to "Discard". And since users are more
likely to want to keep their changes, an intimidating term for the "loose
changes" button isn't so bad and makes them think twice. However, if the
document was saved before, "Delete" could be confusing and "Discard" or
"Discard changes" would be better. Otherwise users do think the application
will delete the original file.
Best regards,
-Stephan
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