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Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

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Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#191

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

userbinator wrote: post #53
JonathonW wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ok" for a change (that's described in the body of the dialog's text) is... okay, I suppose. But it's better to mirror the action verb for your confirmation button, because users don't necessarily read the text you present them with. So, instead of this: Delete xyz.jpg? -------------------------- The file 'xyz.jpg' will be permanently deleted. -------------------------- [ OK ] [ Cancel ] You have: Delete xyz.jpg? ---…

Actually "mirror the action verb" surprises/confuses me even more than "OK" "Cancel", since the latter are standard and almost expected, whereas anything other than a positive/negative response feels unexpected. It's like the real-life equivalent of asking someone a yes/no question --- you're expecting a yes/no answer. In fact, I'd say this is even clearer, putting the question at the end and immediately following it…

What about "Yes, [Action]" and "No, Cancel" to get most of the best of both worlds?

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#192

Post by Erikun »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #178
cyberferret wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I used to build model aircraft dioramas, a veteran told me "When you arrange vehicles in a diorama setting, always have them facing towards the left side of the board for maximum impact.". His reasoning was that most people's eyes move left to right when examining something - which mimics their eye movement when reading text (at least in Western societies. In R-L countries I guess the opposite would be true…

> which mimics their eye movement when reading text (at least in Western societies. In R-L countries I guess the opposite would be true). So how would this work in Ancient Greece where they wrote boustrophedon (alternately left to right and right to left)? And how does it work for illiterate people or peoples without a written language?

Well as to the second question, in the Chauvet cave paintings the animals face both left and right. A bit of a small sample though.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#193

Post by moring »

StavrosK wrote: post #32
JonathonW wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ok" for a change (that's described in the body of the dialog's text) is... okay, I suppose. But it's better to mirror the action verb for your confirmation button, because users don't necessarily read the text you present them with. So, instead of this: Delete xyz.jpg? -------------------------- The file 'xyz.jpg' will be permanently deleted. -------------------------- [ OK ] [ Cancel ] You have: Delete xyz.jpg? ---…

Yes, precisely. The worst UI I've ever seen was: "Cancel this action?" "Yes" "Cancel" Seriously?!

I'm currently in the process of writing together some basic UI guidelines at work, and one of the special cases was exactly this: If the dialog asks for confirmation to cancel a process, it must ask, "cancel this process", and the buttons must be labeled "yes" and "no", never "cancel".

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#194

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

Too wrote: post #166
latexr wrote: post #89

On macOS I have turned on the setting that lets one tab through all controls (System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → All controls). When a “Cancel OK” dialog appears, “OK” is the default choice (in blue) but Cancel is the highlighted one[1], presumably because it’s the first option. This is incredibly convenient because ↵ will activate “OK”, while pressing the space bar will activate “Cancel”. One gets used fast…

Wow, you have to manually activate such an option? On windows it's default. One of the things i love about windows is that it's always been designed for keyboard only use, not just bolted on as an afterthought. Every dialog, widget, application and feature can be used with only the keyboard and it's fast, easy and predictable how to. Unfortunately since windows 8 there's been some regressions in this area with the ne…

Keyboard support on the Mac is terrible. It's probably the biggest flaw of the OS, imo. You wouldn't believe some of the ridiculousness - for example, the page up/down, home/end keys are application-specific in their behaviour. Moreover, they sometimes move the view, but not the cursor - an insane behaviour. I regularly find myself moving to the top of a document using the keyboard, then remembering I'm wasting my time and reaching over for the mouse, one click, and back to the keyboard...

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#195

Post by kiriakasis »

cyberferret wrote: post #115
jaysonelliot wrote: post #19

This has been a debate for as long as I've been a UX designer (mid '90s), and probably much longer. Ultimately, the answer about this UX style is very much the same as a question about writing style—there's no objectively right answer, but you have to be consistent. For example, you can pick up any number of style books from Strunk & White to the Chicago Manual of Style and get different "right" answers about writing…

Back when I used to build model aircraft dioramas, a veteran told me "When you arrange vehicles in a diorama setting, always have them facing towards the left side of the board for maximum impact.". His reasoning was that most people's eyes move left to right when examining something - which mimics their eye movement when reading text (at least in Western societies. In R-L countries I guess the opposite would be true…

Just a quick note on Right-to-Left countries, IIRC Nintendo said that they tested both R-L and L-R for Mario games and found and found R-L more natural in Japan

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#196

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

hoosieree wrote: post #112

All of these are wrong, because they're answering the wrong question. Stop second-guessing the user! Get rid of all these buttons, but provide a mechanism to UNDO the change. Linear undo plus the option to reinstate "factory default" settings is probably optimal for most applications. Would you tolerate a text editor that asked you to confirm each letter you typed?

If I write a sentence in my editor, then change a preference setting, then click 'undo', should that undo my typing or the preference change? I feel like a global 'undo last action' would be very confusing, but how else would you get rid of 'cancel' everywhere?

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#197

Post by laythea »

fnord123 wrote: post #182
cyberferret wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I used to build model aircraft dioramas, a veteran told me "When you arrange vehicles in a diorama setting, always have them facing towards the left side of the board for maximum impact.". His reasoning was that most people's eyes move left to right when examining something - which mimics their eye movement when reading text (at least in Western societies. In R-L countries I guess the opposite would be true…

Toy cars in shops have the cars and trucks all facing right in the packaging. Maybe they've done some ab-testing to get this way. Maybe not. Maybe putting his airplanes facing left made your veteran's models pop because they were inconsistent with other models. Anyway, if you want to make people read the options on buttons, randomize the order each time the popup appears but always destructive buttons like "delete" r…

Please don't randomise the location of UI components. I don't want to have to find the button I want. Your users will thank you.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#198

Post by detaro »

kiriakasis wrote: post #195
cyberferret wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I used to build model aircraft dioramas, a veteran told me "When you arrange vehicles in a diorama setting, always have them facing towards the left side of the board for maximum impact.". His reasoning was that most people's eyes move left to right when examining something - which mimics their eye movement when reading text (at least in Western societies. In R-L countries I guess the opposite would be true…

Just a quick note on Right-to-Left countries, IIRC Nintendo said that they tested both R-L and L-R for Mario games and found and found R-L more natural in Japan

Did they make any games that way in the japanese versions?

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#199

Post by laythea »

smichel17 wrote: post #10
scrollaway wrote: post #6

HN folks will appreciate the entire Factorio blog. They are super open about the design of their game and it's full of micro-postmortems. https://www.factorio.com/blog/ Also, if you're reading this, you are in a demographic that is likely to absolutely love Factorio. Go buy it, it's 20 eur/usd, you won't regret it. Some call it "Programming: The Game".

> Some call it "Programming: The Game". This is actually why I haven't bought it (yet). When I have the urge to program something, I think I'd rather put that towards building something real than playing Factorio.

I'm the same. I love it but it does involve mental work to achieve, and would rather spend the efforts into something real.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#200

Post by badsectoracula »

eliaspro wrote: post #47
badsectoracula wrote: post #34

> But little I knew, that this is actually specific to windows, and on Linux or macOS, the order is reversed Actually on Linux it depends on the toolkit and/or environment you are using and in this case it seems that GNOME/GTK is the odd one out. After doing some search, it looks like that every other toolkit and environment uses OK -> Cancel: http://ocsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/plasma-krunner-... (KDE) http…

IIRC KDE (or was it Gnome) changes the order depending on whether it's a RTL or LTR locale.

Apparenly Windows does that too [1] (or did at some point, i can't find any recent shot that showed a dialog box). It actually looks like it flips the entire window horizontally in RTL :-P.

[1] http://www.geocities.ws/mowasel/tech_zone/images/dialog5.jpg

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