[Design] Gloabl UI Design

[Nicholas Bastin]

On Nov 18, 2005, at 5:33 PM, Brad Lauster wrote:

> Hi Nick,
> I'm struggling to find the best way to respond because the fact is,  
> good software shouldn't have confirmation dialogs in the first place.

Not every 'OK'/'Cancel' permutation is a confirmation dialog.  Take  
classic 'Print' and 'Page Setup' dialogs, for example.  That's a  
pretty hard dialog to create without a 'Close' button at the very least.

> Following either of these paths makes the issue of Ok/Cancel button  
> placement a moot point. But let's say a case arises where you  
> absolutely must have a confirmation dialog...
>
> In this case, putting the buttons in the same place every time  
> merely creates another problem. That is, the consistency encourages  
> the user to form bad habits.

I agree with this point in the case of confirmation dialogs.   
However, take the above example - I have often mistakenly clicked  
'Print' on Windows many times when I meant to close the dialog and  
change a few settings first.  If I experienced the same layout on a  
MacOS X application, I'd never use it again.  (I have to forgive this  
on Win32, of course, since that's the place it belongs on Windows).

--
Nick