Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!reed!chaffee From: chaffee@reed.UUCP (Alex Chaffee) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: User Chosen Alerts (was Re: The Great Alert Contest) Message-ID: <13317@reed.UUCP> Date: 16 Sep 89 17:30:03 GMT References: <24871@santra.UUCP> <8461@hoptoad.uucp> <25123@santra.UUCP> <8502@hoptoad.uucp> <1370@speedy.mcnc.org> <8508@hoptoad.uucp> <13586@well.UUCP> <5311@umd5.umd.edu> Reply-To: chaffee@reed.UUCP (Alex Chaffee) Organization: Reed College, Portland OR Lines: 38 In article <5311@umd5.umd.edu> zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston) writes: >In article <13586@well.UUCP> svc@well.UUCP (Leonard Rosenthol) writes: > >> The concept is something I am calling 'User-Chosen Alerts'. What this means >> is that each non-error related alert, such as the Save Changes, or Do you >> want to Quit?, etc., have two new buttons. One would read, 'No, and don't >> bother me again' and the other 'Yes, and don't bother me again'. Good concept, bad implementation... >Wouldn't it be more user-friendly to have a "Set Defaults..." menu with nice >radio buttons or something? > >Sig DS.L ('ZBen') ; Ben Cranston >* Computer Science Center Network Infrastructures Group >* University of Maryland at College Park Exactly! -- The single easiest trap to fall into with the Mac UI -- and one of the most annoying for me as a user -- is, for example, making everything a button. Or making everything a hierarchical menu... Don't forget about check boxes, radio buttons, scroll bars, pop-up menus... and, of course, custom controls... not to mention intelligent design of menu options... Speaking to the issue at hand, I like the idea of an auto-save (though I have been burned more than once by LSC's auto-save), but am really opposed to an auto-don't-save. Think about it: what if you're trying to (say) select text near the upper left window and you accidentally point too far and click the close box... Suddenly, the window and all of your work is gone forever. Slightly more acceptable would be defining command-close to mean "close without save" -- but then we're into the realm of obscure, non-standard interfaces, which the Mac is supposed to have put behind us all... Disclaimer: I'm unemployed; I can say what I want. -- Alex Chaffee chaffee@reed.UUCP ____________________