Cancel - OK
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Colin Mullikin wrote:
That is his one and only reason.
And it's a valid reason.
Colin Mullikin wrote:
He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people).
It probably annoyed them when y'all did it backwards to start with. Can always annoy them again. I've studied UI, and the whole reasoning behind doing something like
Cancel | OKis completely invalidated by never changing its order. In fact, to be consistent with the premise of it, you should change it randomly (ie to force users to read the message). Otherwise it just shows a complete lack of disregard for standards and poor UI design.Jeremy Falcon
:thumbsup:
Will Rogers never met me.
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
Simple solution is to have a OkayCancelButtons composite control that you can use a style setting to choose which way round they appear. Default is Cancel/Okay and QA mode is Okay/Cancel
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
Doing this is entirely situational, switching the OK/Cancel buttons on a few dialogue boxes now and then so that the end user actually has to pay attention as to what they are doing rather than just clicking OK on everything while being a zoned out drone. Alternately you can randomise the OK/Cancel button so that on some dialogue boxes they are switched and on others not, but when the program is used a second time, the OK/Cancel buttons may be in the reverse order. But if you don't mind your users being zoned out drones then there is no legitimate reason to switch them.
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jschell wrote:
Good try but no I don't buy it.
Agreed.
Jeremy Falcon
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Quote:
what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it).
Is just plain wrong. The OK or "moving forward" button should be at the bottom right. The Cancel or "give up and go back" button should be to the left of it similar in action and placement to Forward and Back buttons on browsers - except they are at the top.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
It is just plain wrong. The dialog is shown for breaking the sequence, not for making it flow.
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Colin Mullikin wrote:
That is his one and only reason.
And it's a valid reason.
Colin Mullikin wrote:
He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people).
It probably annoyed them when y'all did it backwards to start with. Can always annoy them again. I've studied UI, and the whole reasoning behind doing something like
Cancel | OKis completely invalidated by never changing its order. In fact, to be consistent with the premise of it, you should change it randomly (ie to force users to read the message). Otherwise it just shows a complete lack of disregard for standards and poor UI design.Jeremy Falcon
WHS!
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
Colin Mullikin wrote:
That is his one and only reason
Unfortunately it is a good reason. One thing I learned is that users complain a lot, but very often they adapt within a few hours of the rollout. Those that can't adapt are those that couldn't work with it in the first place. Besides 200 dialogs is not thát much. Yes it is a bloody annoying and tedious job. it will keep you busy for the better part of the day, but that's about it. But I can imagine it's not much fun to be told to do something when you did it differently for so long.
V.
(MQOTD rules and previous solutions) -
Colin Mullikin wrote:
We have been consistently doing it this way for over a decade.
I get it, but I don't believe there is every a valid reason for continuing to do something wrong. I realize you got users to deal with that may even not care as much as devs do, but I'd still fix it.
Jeremy Falcon
I agree. But unfortunatly this is the ideal and not the reality in the world. I've seen many applications where the developers thought it good to make the Cancel button default, not providing hot keys, even providing wonderful names for there buttons like proceed etc. Although the reasoning behind it may be to force the user to read the screen, I think the rest of the argument should keep in mind that a user who is familiar with a system would like to rely on automatics for the obvious tasks, and have a consistent experience across different applications. Well, one can only hope... :^)
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
Well, you should have thought of that before you did such a piss poor design... ;)
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time -
For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
I came to Windows from RISC OS, where OK was in the bottom right, two decades ago, and I still think that it's the correct layout. If MS thinks it's right for the order to be OK - Cancel, why don't they use Next - Prev too?
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In my expert opinion :), the Cancel button should ALWAYS be on the right, and here's why... Your app undoubtedly has many dialogs, and not all of them have OK and Cancel. I have been writing enterprise apps going on 30 years. The set of dialogs I use contain some of these... - Yes & Cancel - Yes, No, Cancel. - Select & Cancel - Login & Cancel. - Save & Cancel. - Proceed & Cancel. - Connect & Cancel - Rotate, Align, Cancel - Ignore QA & Cancel ... and there are more. See the pattern? Cancel is ALWAYS last. Send your God this book[^]. It was written in book form by MS many moons ago, but the principals still apply. Book form is here[^] Then have him see this[^].
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Kevin Marois wrote:
- Cancel & Yes
- Cancel, No, Yes.
- Cancel & Select
- Cancel & Login.
- Cancel & Save.
- Cancel & Proceed.
- Cancel & Connect
- Cancel, Rotate, Align
- Cancel & Ignore QAFTFY. ;)
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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I came to Windows from RISC OS, where OK was in the bottom right, two decades ago, and I still think that it's the correct layout. If MS thinks it's right for the order to be OK - Cancel, why don't they use Next - Prev too?
Way back, in the old days when MS and IBM were friends, was developed a standard called the Common User Access, CUA, giving the common guidelines for Windows, OS/2 and Motif user interfaces. The CUA was published as an IBM document, but was endorsed by MS (and I believe several other companies). Windows 3 was developed in close to 100% adherence to the CUA rules. The CUA stated clearly that normal completion of a dialog is done by clicking the button in the lower right corner. In other words, OK to the right. The first CUA rule (at least among the essential ones) were the location of the Help menu: CUA requires it to be pushed to the very right on the menu line. I don't remember when MS decided to move it together with the other pulldown menus; that could be in Win 3.11. We started out with consistency where you by instinct clicked the bottom right button to complete normally, to a transition period where an increaing fraction of the applications made you follow your instincts, swear, and redo the entire dialog, this time reading the button texts closely, to the current situation where everything is so inconsistent and free of rules that you cannot rely on instincts but must read all the buttons anyway. ("But OUR software is consistent" - sure, the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Most customers buy software from several different vendors.) Whenever I make user interfaces, I follow the CUA rule of normal termination being the bottom right button. Nowadays, all user must read the button labels anyway, so this is as good a choice as any other. Or even better, since I can justify my choice by referring to a user interface standard document. (True enough: It was published more than 25 years ago, but it is far better than nothing).
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
The period in my life when I had my highest frequency of swearing loudly at my office desk was when we used an editor that at exit might display a warning (this was before the mouse was common, so you responded through the keyboard: "You have not saved the last modifications to the file. Do you want to save it before exiting? (Y/N)" Of course you would immediately hit the "Y" key. Then we switched to another editor that had very much of the same style user interface, but it would give the warning: "You have not saved the last modifications to the file. Do you really want to exit without saving? (Y/N)" Obviously, from old habit, you hit the "Y" key. Then you would swear loudly and be grumpy for the rest of the day. Moral: Don't play games with the user's old habits.
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As a side note, I should mention that the initial design decision was made over a decade ago. Switching now benefits no one. A reason I have seen for Cancel | OK is that if the user does read the buttons, it results in fewer visual fixations. If they want to click OK, the result is two visual fixations: Cancel, OK, click. If the buttons are switched, the result is three visual fixations: OK, Cancel, OK, click.
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
Just a thought: you seem to assume that every user always clicks buttons. Depending on your application, and considering the fact that some users are really good at the keyboard and may prefer not having to resort to the mouse, how many of your users, do you think, may be using the keyboard instead, and may be annoyed by the fact that for your - and only your - application they need to type [tab]-[tab}-[return] rather than just [tab]-return]? As a software devolper, I see that a lot of functionality in software development tools are mouse-oriented. Yet these functions are all also available via keyboard shortcuts or keyboard navigation! There are plenty of professionals who almost never use the mouse at all, simply because it slows them down. And I'm sure they would be less than happy if any of their tools would favor Cancel/OK over OK/Cancel!
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]
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For several months now, one of our testers has been pushing to get the OK and Cancel buttons switched in every single dialog in our application (roughly 200 dialogs). His only reasoning for this is that the way we do it (OK in bottom right corner, Cancel to the left of it) is the opposite of what Microsoft does throughout Windows(Cancel in bottom right corner, OK to the left of it). That is his one and only reason. He fails to acknowledge that switching it will annoy the hell out of every single person that uses our software (thousands of people). The next time he brings it up I might punch him in the face. :mad:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
His reasoning is valid. It may not be sufficient to justify changing it, either because user annoyance more than counters it or simply because it's a reasonably large cost for a reasonably small gain, so he shouldn't keep pushing it if he's been rebuffed. But inconsistency with standard OS practices is a valid thing for a tester to complain about.
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We switched the order internally for one day, and every single person that used it clicked Cancel at least a dozen times when they meant to hit OK, including the tester that wants it switched. So, despite knowing about the change and being a regular user of other applications with the OK | Cancel standard, I had to consciously make sure I clicked the correct button, rather than using my "muscle memory" of clicking on the bottom right corner.
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
If Microsoft worked by that logic we'd still be using MS-DOS. Change takes getting used to. That doesn't mean it's bad.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]