Yes or No 2

July 12th, 2005
Categories: Interaction, Interface, OS X

Aside from the benefit to users of the software, it is important that Apple follow their own guidelines for dialog design to set a good example for other developers.

Microsoft Word 2004

Saving a formatted document as plain text:

With the filename (if the document has already been saved) and an action-labeled button:

Firefox

Adding a login/password combo to the internal keychain (yet another reason I don’t use Firefox as my default browser):

Camino (among other OS X browsers) already provides a properly worded prompt for this:

The “Remember this password…” question should be bold. Off to Bugzilla I go…

Opera

Adding a syndication feed:

With proper button alignment, text styling, and an action-labeled button:

Gizmo

Prompting to add a person who has added you to their Contact List to yours:

Compacted, with action-labeled buttons (Do Not Add is used instead of Cancel because the dialog’s appearance is not caused by direct user action):

TextWrangler

Prompting to install the TextWrangler command line tool:

Prompting to install the twdiff command line tool:

A single dialog with action-labeled buttons (again, Cancel is not used because this dialog is summoned not by direct user action but automatically when the application is first launched):

This dialog provides a bit of information about how to use the tools and can scale reasonably well if additional command line tools are included in a future release. The buttons for installing tools later should be in one Preference window section.

ecto

Resetting the application and renewing the trial period:

With slightly reworded text and an action-labeled button:

iTunes

The dialog to confirm that an image should be embedded in the tracks of multiple selected albums can’t decide whether it wants to be a Cancel/OK or No/Yes, so it splits the difference:

With a clearer explanation of what will actually happen and an action-labeled button:

Dialog wording and button labeling is very important to users because poor design can lead to inadvertent data loss.

3 Responses to “Yes or No 2”

  1. Damien Guard, on August 12th, 2005 at 7:36 AM Said:

    So what exactly would happen if I unchecked both checkboxes on the TextWrangler dialog then hit Install…

    Other examples are good. I think the laziness of Yes/No OK/Cancel come from developers used to other UI toolkits that provided dialogs with the buttons already set.

    [)amien

  2. Membranophonist, on August 12th, 2005 at 11:07 AM Said:

    Damien:

    Admittedly, I hadn’t thought of that! The Install button would become unclickable if neither box was checked. I think most people would just click Do Not Install if they didn’t want any of the tools, but handling the scenario you mention would be necessary.

  3. sil, on September 2nd, 2005 at 12:03 PM Said:

    I was just about to post what Damien did. In addition, what happens if you untick *one* option and then click “Do Not Install”? Will it still install the other one? I’d say that “Do Not Install” actually should be “Cancel” even though it isn’t user-produced, to avoid both of these confusing elements (and I agree that “Install” should be disabled if both are unticked).

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