From: ericzen (ericzen@ez-net.com)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 15:29:23 EDT
On 2003.06.01 11:41 Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> I am not among the people who feel the need to eredicate the OK button.
> There was a discussion on the usability list recently in which people were
> taking it a bit too far.
>
> Consistantly using the same mnemonic can be useful in places where you are
> happy to accept the default values.
>
> It is on dangerous destructive actions that OK should definately be
> avoided.
> Do you want to obliterate your hardrive? [ OK ]
>
> OK is best used to acknowledge benign bits of information or tasks that
> you dont really have much choice about.
> I believe Msword now has message dialogs that dont steal focus and will go
> away automatically after a few seconds if you ignore them, which nicely
> covers the situations where the status bar isn't quite good enough.
>
> The OK button is almost irrelavant in this dialog, you should be able to
> type the password and hit return.
>
> Dont try too hard, OK is fine in this situation.
First off, I'm missing an incredible 48hour online ink sale for selected customers only just to put in my 2 cents, which doesn't even cover the cost of electricity.
I really like "Authorize" in place of OK here. From a technical standpoint, it makes sense; you see it almost anywhere you'd submit a password, with the next nearest term being "Confirm."
However, I think Alan is right (don't quote me on that); it is probably best that people associate the more benign actions with OK. It lets them know we aren't going to send a video hack to blow out the monitor. Dogbert might argue it's a great way to remove their critical thinking skills and trick them into doing horrifying things, for example, see any Outlook/Express virus ever created....
In general, however, for many people, "Authorize" can have a very determined tone that might make them think twice, or even worry, when they don't have to worry at all, especially as they aren't considering nuking the Netherlands...much less a country of actual importance, unlike that pot-smoking, sub-sea-level-dwelling, prostitute-tolerating, dyke-worshiping, porn-loving, multi-president-having, freaky deaky....[Ozzy WuZ HeRe]
What was I on about? OK, yes, ok is ok with OK. We don't want to scare anyone right away.
-Zen
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