Re: Dialog Boxes

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From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Dialog Boxes
Date: 19:05 on 03 Nov 2003
> > Apples HCI gudelines are a bit schizophrenic here, because they say the
> > labels should be verbs, but they also say that one could be "Cancel".

> When did "cancel" stop being a verb?

The point isn't that it's not a verb. The point is that they're supposed
to be verbs because they're supposed to be meaningful actions. If one is
always "Cancel", then it's not meaningful when "Cancel" isn't a meaningful
option. 

If you're doing a two-step operation, and you decide to abort it after the
first step, what does "Cancel" mean? Well, it means "Cancel the last button
you pressed", not "Cancel the operation you were performing".

You have to *learn* that Cancel has a particular technical meaning that
only ever applies to the user interface. It's just as much jargon as "OK"
and "Quit" on Windows.

There's stuff above here

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