OK or Cancel?


  • 🚽 Regular

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Cancel. Just in case.



  • Is this a trick question? Anyway I would unplug the computer immediately.



  • why are there 2 buttons


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @fwd said in OK or Cancel?:

    why are there 2 buttons

    It's for setting options. But you only opened it to look, not make changes.



  • @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Ccancel guarantees that if you accidentally hit spacebar when the "computer should be on fire" checkbox was focused, it won't commit your change.

    Clicking OK is unreasonable since it might worsen the state of whatever the form controls. Cancel won't - yes, you might end up with a computer on fire if you thought you didn't make any changes, but you did. But that means your computer was already on fire.



  • @boomzilla that makes sense.

    cancel, always.


  • 🚽 Regular

    I'm glad you all agree with me. Had a petty argument with someone about this recently. The guy's rationale for always hitting OK was "I know the settings are correct, and what if there was some weird bug that self-corrected the settings before I opened the dialog, which need to be saved?"



  • @the_quiet_one usually I'm concerned about the opposite: that there's a weird bug that'll cause the settings to be saved differently if I hit OK. It's not an unfounded concern, as through software upgrades old settings have become incompatible such that if you were to open the settings dialog, it would change them for you and remove the legacy behavior.



  • @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct.

    Why would that be in a dialog and not, you know, the actual form where you entered the data in the first place?

    I'd question the design of this software.

    Then hit the close box.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @blakeyrat said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct.

    Why would that be in a dialog and not, you know, the actual form where you entered the data in the first place?

    I'd question the design of this software.

    Then hit the close box.

    The dialog is the form. I'm talking about stuff like what you'd find in Windows' Control Panel.



  • @the_quiet_one If it's a video game, I'd hit Ok, then quit the program and restart it because I can't tell you how many times I've set an option in a game (especially an option critical to gameplay, like turning on subtitles) and then the game crashed and lost it all and I had to do it over. Closing it properly ensures the settings actually get saved.

    (Note also in a slightly unrelated note: games that show cutscenes before you have the option to turn on subtitles are satan incarnate.)

    If it weren't a game, then we're back to use the close box, that's what it's there for.



  • It's amusing how we have a variety of different answers based on different possible bugs.

    We're getting too used to this shit.

    (edit: obviously nodebb crashed while I tried posting this the first time)


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Retry. Obviously.



  • When in doubt, to be on the safe side I use the close button on the window.

    ...hoping that changes aren't auto-saved unless I cancel.



  • @mikael_svahnberg said in OK or Cancel?:

    changes aren't auto-saved unless I cancel.

    That would be some really evil design if Cancel saved your changes.



  • @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    @mikael_svahnberg said in OK or Cancel?:

    changes aren't auto-saved unless I cancel.

    That would be some really evil design if Cancel saved your changes.

    Sorry, that probably came out wrong. I mean that the only way to do a rollback would be to press cancel, and all other actions just end the transaction.



  • @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    I would tend to click the Cancel button, but be wondering why the settings don’t just apply automatically when I make them instead of requiring me to click a button to confirm I really want to change them.


  • Considered Harmful

    @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    @mikael_svahnberg said in OK or Cancel?:

    changes aren't auto-saved unless I cancel.

    That would be some really evil design if Cancel saved your changes.

    Evidently you haven't interacted with GWX.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Why is OK not disabled until something has been changed within the dialog?



  • @pjh Why would it be? It says "Ok" not something like "Apply Changes".



  • @blakeyrat said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh Why would it be? It says "Ok" not something like "Apply Changes".

    The dialogs that have all three buttons (Cancel, OK, and Apply) are even more fun. That is, they’re fun to watch other people use: does the person, after changing something, click Apply before clicking OK, or not?



  • @gurth said in OK or Cancel?:

    @blakeyrat said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh Why would it be? It says "Ok" not something like "Apply Changes".

    The dialogs that have all three buttons (Cancel, OK, and Apply) are even more fun. That is, they’re fun to watch other people use: does the person, after changing something, click Apply before clicking OK, or not?

    I do sometimes. Apply, check if computer on fire, if not click OK to exit, if so uncheck the checkbox and re-apply.

    Saves that half a second spent on reopening the form if I got something wrong.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    I seem to recall this issue when editing Jenkins jobs: Save and Apply are the only buttons at the bottom of the form. Apply saves and keeps you on the screen, Save saves and returns you to the job status page. I think. Will have to fact-check later.

    Edit: Yup

    0_1504989391351_48c4e299-4bcb-44c9-baae-0f42c901d274-image.png


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @gurth said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    I would tend to click the Cancel button, but be wondering why the settings don’t just apply automatically when I make them instead of requiring me to click a button to confirm I really want to change them.

    I value that behavior. Sometimes I change something, go to another part, realize/think about something and decide "Belgium it" and hit cancel to undo. This is more of a problem in a complex settings dialog where there may be many inter-related changes I'm making rather than in simple ones, but undo buttons are (almost?) always a nice convenience.



  • @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    I do sometimes. Apply, check if computer on fire, if not click OK to exit, if so uncheck the checkbox and re-apply.

    Saves that half a second spent on reopening the form if I got something wrong.

    Sure, there are legitimate use cases. But most people I’ve observed showing this behaviour click Apply and then immediately move the mouse pointer over to OK and click that. Most of the ones I asked, said they thought they needed to click Apply to get the settings to change — in other words, that just clicking OK wouldn’t do anything.



  • @dreikin said in OK or Cancel?:

    @gurth said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    I would tend to click the Cancel button, but be wondering why the settings don’t just apply automatically when I make them instead of requiring me to click a button to confirm I really want to change them.

    I value that behavior. Sometimes I change something, go to another part, realize/think about something and decide "Belgium it" and hit cancel to undo. This is more of a problem in a complex settings dialog where there may be many inter-related changes I'm making rather than in simple ones, but undo buttons are (almost?) always a nice convenience.

    Yeah, I don't get why there's a trend of abandoning OK/Cancel buttons. Why make the user persist every intermediate and possibly broken state outright?


  • kills Dumbledore

    @gurth said in OK or Cancel?:

    @blakeyrat said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh Why would it be? It says "Ok" not something like "Apply Changes".

    The dialogs that have all three buttons (Cancel, OK, and Apply) are even more fun. That is, they’re fun to watch other people use: does the person, after changing something, click Apply before clicking OK, or not?

    I click apply then cancel if anyone non technical is watching



  • @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    Yeah, I don't get why there's a trend of abandoning OK/Cancel buttons. Why make the user persist every intermediate and possibly broken state outright?

    If it doesn’t warn before letting you change something that might dangerously break stuff, then it's bad design. But in general I prefer to immediately see what is going to happen if I change an option — say I want to have it display seconds as well as hours and minutes on the clock, I don’t see why it shouldn’t just do that immediately when I click the check box, and remove the seconds when I uncheck it.



  • Why not "DoIt!" instead?

    (A cookie for anyone who knows that story. No, wait, I think I mentioned it here before... in any case, the way I wrote it right now should make the problem obvious. On the Lisa, there was a space, but the system font was something like Chicago 10pt., so...)


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    @dreikin said in OK or Cancel?:

    @gurth said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    I would tend to click the Cancel button, but be wondering why the settings don’t just apply automatically when I make them instead of requiring me to click a button to confirm I really want to change them.

    I value that behavior. Sometimes I change something, go to another part, realize/think about something and decide "Belgium it" and hit cancel to undo. This is more of a problem in a complex settings dialog where there may be many inter-related changes I'm making rather than in simple ones, but undo buttons are (almost?) always a nice convenience.

    Yeah, I don't get why there's a trend of abandoning OK/Cancel buttons. Why make the user persist every intermediate and possibly broken state outright?

    Agreed. I fucked up the firewall doing that. My intention was to make the first port the WAN interface, and the second port the LAN interface (by default it's reversed for some reason, probably for idgits that install it on a device that has only one ethernet interface?), and right as I finished the first step (assigning the LAN port to be eth1) it broke literally Everything, since apparently it's not a good idea to have your WAN interface being the same as your LAN interface, requiring a factory reset....


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    kek

    0_1505115206966_3c6a2a81-a911-441d-9de6-730b2abce1ab-image.png

    Neither OK or Cancel!


  • :belt_onion:

    @maciejasjmj said in OK or Cancel?:

    Clicking OK is unreasonable since it might worsen the state of whatever the form controls

    Is it bad that part of the reason I don't click OK is because I'm used to programs modifying input without me changing anything?

    (this seems to happen most often on websites - you open the settings page, change a single field, and end up with a bunch of changes because someone did something stupid with the form submit js)


  • :belt_onion:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Why is OK not disabled until something has been changed within the dialog?

    Now I kinda want to make the World's Most Confusing Dialog

    [Before Changes]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    [After Changes]
    [Cancel][Apply][OK]

    [After Clicking "Apply"]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @sloosecannon said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Why is OK not disabled until something has been changed within the dialog?

    Now I kinda want to make the World's Most Confusing Dialog

    [Before Changes]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    [After Changes]
    [Cancel][Apply][OK]

    [After Clicking "Apply"]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    By having three [Close] buttons?

    
    +----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                    |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                [close] [apply] [close] |
    +----------------------------------------+
    

  • :belt_onion:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @sloosecannon said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Why is OK not disabled until something has been changed within the dialog?

    Now I kinda want to make the World's Most Confusing Dialog

    [Before Changes]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    [After Changes]
    [Cancel][Apply][OK]

    [After Clicking "Apply"]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    By having three [Close] buttons?

    
    +----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                    |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                [close] [apply] [close] |
    +----------------------------------------+
    

    Yes.

    And disable the one at the top when changes are made.

    Bonus points if the keyboard shortcuts change too...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @sloosecannon said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @sloosecannon said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pjh said in OK or Cancel?:

    @the_quiet_one said in OK or Cancel?:

    Let's say you opened a dialog to review options and verify they are correct. The options you see are all set correctly, so you want to close the dialog. Do you hit OK or do you hit Cancel?

    Discuss.

    Why is OK not disabled until something has been changed within the dialog?

    Now I kinda want to make the World's Most Confusing Dialog

    [Before Changes]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    [After Changes]
    [Cancel][Apply][OK]

    [After Clicking "Apply"]
    [Close][Apply (disabled)][Close]

    By having three [Close] buttons?

    
    +----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                    |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                                        |
    |                [close] [apply] [close] |
    +----------------------------------------+
    

    Yes.

    And disable the one at the top when changes are made.

    Bonus points if the keyboard shortcuts change too...

    I suggest c for the left close, y for the apply, and n for the right close. The top close will be o.


  • 🚽 Regular

    +----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                    |
    |                                        |
    |    Are you sure you want to close?     |
    |                                        |
    |                [close] [apply] [close] |
    +----------------------------------------+
    

  • 🚽 Regular

    +-----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                     |
    |                                         |
    |    Close window and cancel all changes? |
    |                                         |
    |                       [close] [cancel]  |
    +-----------------------------------------+
    

  • :belt_onion:

    @zecc said in OK or Cancel?:

    +-----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                     |
    |                                         |
    |    Close window and cancel all changes? |
    |                                         |
    |               [close] [cancel] [apply]  |
    +-----------------------------------------+
    


  • When asked, Do you truly wish to cancel your order?
    my only choices were OK and Cancel.
    I chose Cancel, yet received ten thousand pitchforks—
    I shall send one to your posterior... OK?



  • @zecc said in OK or Cancel?:

    +-----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                     |
    |                                         |
    |    Close window and cancel all changes? |
    |                                         |
    |                       [close] [cancel]  |
    +-----------------------------------------+

    Don't forget the keyboard shortcuts!



  • @sloosecannon said in OK or Cancel?:

    @zecc said in OK or Cancel?:

    +-----------------------------------------+
    | [x]                                     |
    |                                         |
    |    Close window and cancel all changes? |
    |                                         |
    |               [close] [cancel] [apply]  |
    +-----------------------------------------+
    

    Welcome to TDWTF, where even horrible ideas are bikeshedded...😈



  • @mikael_svahnberg said in OK or Cancel?:

    When in doubt, to be on the safe side I use the close button on the window.

    ...hoping that changes aren't auto-saved unless I cancel.

    I seem to remember fixing a bug like that. Recently.



  • My problem with those dialogs is that "Cancel" is ambiguous as it usually means "close the dialog while ignoring changes that may have been made" but in the user minds it might mean "undo what I've done" which may or may not be the same thing (especially if there is an "Apply" button as well).

    "Close" is much less ambiguous as it only means one thing, close the dialog. Whether changes are saved or not does not depend on that specific button, but on whether the dialog auto-saves changes, and here having the other button called "Apply" or "Undo" ("reset", "revert", whatever) makes that more obvious.

    Ok/Apply/Cancel are the worst, I much prefer "apply & close/apply/close" (and maybe an additional "reset" if that makes sense). It's a bit more verbose but at least there is no ambiguity. "Apply & close" is optional, it's not really much more work to click first "apply" then "close" (but of course that would depend).


  • Considered Harmful

    Old but thread-relevant.



  • @pie_flavor IIRC pressing the close button did nothing, the action would happen even if you left the dialogue open. A more accurate description would be "Microsoft imposes a countdown on users without confirming that they've even acknowledged it".


  • Considered Harmful

    @lb_ said in OK or Cancel?:

    @pie_flavor IIRC pressing the close button did nothing, the action would happen even if you left the dialogue open.

    I read between the lines early on and upgraded intentionally so I wouldn't end up upgrading unintentionally, e.g. in the middle of a family Netflix movie.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @scholrlea said in OK or Cancel?:

    Why not "DoIt!" instead?

    (A cookie for anyone who knows that story. No, wait, I think I mentioned it here before... in any case, the way I wrote it right now should make the problem obvious. On the Lisa, there was a space, but the system font was something like Chicago 10pt., so...)


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