[quote=263570:@Gerd Wilmer]Th is is my pet hate and there seems to be more and more of them.
When I quit a programme, up comes a pop-up “Do you really want to quit?”
Why do you think, I selected to exit???
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One can argue that an app should do that only if there is unsaved data, but in general I think it is a good idea because sometimes I close things by mistake, particularly if I have a lot of apps open.
The good old “Don’t show this message again” checkbox is great, but requires a little more work to implement. It does however give the users some comfort and makes them responsible if they turn it off.
this sounds like a “pet peeves” entry, what percentage of your application user need 2800 “are you sure” messages before you allow them to say YES…
and which platform needs more than the other!
I can feel the warmth of the flames already!!!
I have to admit, every single application I use I do my best to break it, just to be smug when it goes BOOM!
Unfortunately Gerd, the vast majority of users have no idea how to use the software any of us produce, they press all the buttons when we don’t expect, they do not have any idea what the flow of the code is, it should just work, mmmmmmm sounds like an advert.
Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn’t-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.
Worse, I think this is bad design and I think this type of annoying UX happens most often when developers design their own apps. I think I’m OK at designing apps but in reality I’m probably not. I work with an amazing UX guy who almost daily demonstrates to me that I should just write the app and leave the UX to somebody who spends their time meditating on this stuff.
I’ve been in a situation before where you had to click a button (yes, in a popup) in my software to agree to delete a record, and the users denied that they ever pressed the button and blamed my software for losing data. I was forced to implement logging on said button, so I could tell them which user pressed the button and the exact time and day that they pressed it. Only after I implemented the logging did the complaints stop. It really annoyed me that I was forced to log the “you clicked the button” event.
Dealing with irresponsible users is quite annoying.
And i would add as second question: “Are you REALY, REALY sure you want this program started?” and if the user answered “Yes” i would start the program remove the exit button!
Many years ago I created some watermarking software (written in REALbasic), it wasn’t designed to replace the images, rather than create the images in a separate location.
If you tried to replace your originals it would display two dialogs, the first when you set the output folder to be the same as the input and the second when it actually replaced an image.
Yet; I had 3 people claim to start law suits against me for ruining their precious photos without their consent, none of them ever got as far as court. However they each caused frustration and anger, for one version I actually prevented the application from replacing images, that also caused backlash from those who knew what they were doing and were already working on copies of their original images. The last thing I did was to implement an automatic backup (which the disable switch was buried in the preferences), so these people at least had a copy on their machine and I could point them to it, when they fucked up.
You might find that in this particular app, the developer’s had people complain that it’s too easy to quit and lose work. If I was the developer, I would be looking at a Autosave function.
If it is a Java app: two buttons - Yes and Cancel - “Are you sure you want to delete this app?” Button “Yes” deletes the app. Button “Cancel” deletes the app. The world is happy.
[quote=263570:@Gerd Wilmer]Why do you think, I selected to exit???
And if I made a mistake, let me suffer the consequences and start the programme again.[/quote]
This confirmation makes sense when there are indeed possible consequences, such as losing one’s work. Programmers use to be rather protective of their users.
My app Check Printer used to do that, until I decided to auto save and did away with the confirmation as a result.
Competence of computer users varies widely : some are extremely newbies, some are extremely paranoid and their angst is to break something, some others love to zoom through commands. Difficult to please all. As Sam Rowlands described very well, some users can reach sky high levels of frustration. I did not have threats of law suits yet, but I certainly had my content of angry refund requests, as well as nasty unjustified bad reviews in the Mac App Store from users incapable to read the manual.
That said, I love Wayne Golding’s good old “Don’t show this message again” checkbox. I shall think about it next time I implement an “are you sure”.
when I started this conversation, I did not talk about loosing data. In such instances the dialog makes sense.
My gripe is with applications/websites where you seek information, download a file, etc.
In other words, where the worst possible scenario is that you have to restart the app or log in again.
[quote=263629:@Michel Bujardet]My app Check Printer used to do that, until I decided to auto save and did away with the confirmation as a result.
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While for checks it might make sense in general I HATE autosave … maybe it’s because of my age…
I sometimes make a bunch of changes and then decide to do a SAVE AS to save those changes as a new document, keeping the original intact. That always worked in the teh old days… now with some mac apps I wind up with 2 changed versions… that has cost be work more than once
I want to be the one that decides when things happen!!!
BTW my biggest UI issue with Windows is the OS deciding to make teh window full screen when I want to just move it out of the way… Again let me decide what I want to happen!!!
You can turn it off.
To do that, you need to know that Windows thinks this makes you someone with possibly special needs.
Go to control panel/ Ease of access
Then ‘Make the mouse easier to use’
Then untick ‘Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen’
