Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!mcnc!kk From: kk@mcnc.org (Krzysztof Kozminski) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: The Great Standard Yes/No/Cancel Alert Contest Message-ID: <1374@speedy.mcnc.org> Date: 13 Sep 89 12:43:17 GMT References: <24871@santra.UUCP> <8461@hoptoad.uucp> <25123@santra.UUCP> <8502@hoptoad.uucp> <1370@speedy.mcnc.org> <8508@hoptoad.uucp> Reply-To: kk@mcnc.org.UUCP (Krzysztof Kozminski) Organization: Microelectronics Center of NC; RTP, NC Lines: 36 In article <8508@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >In article <1370@speedy.mcnc.org> kk@mcnc.org.UUCP (Kris Kozminski) writes: >>BTW, I find it useful to include one more button: 'save as', for those >>occasions whent quitting is done in panic and the user doesn't really want >>to overwrite an existing file but would like to save the results anyway. > >Um, a good idea, but again, what's really important in the standardization >is that the buttons be in the proper relative positions (...) If you start >moving the buttons around in this standard alert then you risk confusing >the user. Still, I can't deny that your feature is a good one; I'm just >wondering how to put it in without disrupting the dialog's appearance. Easy: the recommended layout is: Many programs, however, use: Save/Yes Save/Yes Cancel Discard/No Discard/No Cancel Quite a number use: Save/Yes Discard/No Cancel in a single row, so the standard is not that standard anyway ... I've just checked 5 popular programs and found 4 different appearances of the supposedly standard alert. The 2 alerts that appeared the same showed up in different places on the screen, so perhaps they should not count as identical. This much for the standard. Anyway, I moved the 'Cancel' button a couple pixels down wrt the recommended layout and have this: Save Save as Discard Cancel KK -- Kris Kozminski kk@mcnc.org "The party was a masquerade; the guests were all wearing their faces."