Best Error Message



  • Tell me if you can follow this.  Remember this a point of sale system for somebody with the IQ of a McDonalds worker and it came from a highly paid consultant that turned employee.

    "The system has detected that there are values that have not been accounted for in the Inventory Count.  If you just wish to save your changes and commit this Inventory Count setting the counts for these items to zero, please click 'Yes', Otherwise click 'No' to save your changes."

    I have a screen shot that I would be happy to reply back to you with.  It is really amazing, because I as the developer don't even understand what he is talking about and I have seen the code and have intimate knowledge of the system.



  • Reminds me of a dialog one of my ex-coworkers designed. When you ran a
    particular report, you got a dialog that said "Do you want to preview
    this report? (Answering Yes will Preview, No will Print).". And the two
    buttons on the dialog? Ok and Cancel.



  • My apologies if I or someone else has posted this one before, but here's a classic from Word (at least Word 2000) that's like nberardi's but not quite as nasty:

    Open a Word .DOC file from an HTTP server inside an Internet Explorer window. Modify the file, then try to close it. Word says:

    I feel like I'm in preschool and I'm being told to match up blocks to the correct holes.



  • Message boxes are retarded in a lot of situations. You can't always quantify a choice down to "Yes" or "No". Maybe the answer is "No, but I'd like to do something else..."

    It doesn't make sense to have buttons that big, so instead they just supply us programmers with a few standard named buttons like Yes, No, OK, Cancel...and you can only put certain ones together. The best you can hope for is the MS Word example above, where they tell you exactly what pressing each button will do.

    And in that case, it's almost like they're insulting your intelligence.



  • And that is why you derive your own class, or create a new one, that has 15 buttons, randomly arranged around the question, with all the bottoms describing a 'grey' answer (ie. maybe, possibly, i dont know, ask the cat)



  • @Manni said:

    Message boxes are retarded in a lot of
    situations. You can't always quantify a choice down to "Yes" or "No".
    Maybe the answer is "No, but I'd like to do something else..."

    It doesn't make sense to have buttons that big, so instead they just supply us programmers with a few standard named buttons like Yes, No, OK, Cancel...and you can only put certain ones together. The best you can hope for is the MS Word example above, where they tell you exactly what pressing each button will do.

    And in that case, it's almost like they're insulting your intelligence.


    Well the MS Word example above is one solution to the problem.  I prefer the KDE solution, where OK is nearly (but not quite) banned from dialogs.

    The KDE equivelent dialog would have 3 buttons: Save, Discard, Cancle.  which doesn't insult anyone's intelligence, and also doesn't require a answer key so that you know what each button does.    Often you don't need to read the dialog, just the buttons, as just those 3 choices when you close a document tell you what is going on.

    I'm not sure why Microsoft doesn't switch to this standard.  I know they have a lot of dialogs, but it would make them all more useable.


  • @sao said:

    And that is why you derive your own class, or create a new one, that has 15 buttons, randomly arranged around the question, with all the bottoms describing a 'grey' answer (ie. maybe, possibly, i dont know, ask the cat)

    Only 15? And when you say that they're arranged randomly around the question, I offer an enhancement: Make the buttons move in a circular pattern around the question. Now the user may be even more vigilant about what button they think will answer the question, because now it's become target practice.



  • I usually design my confirmation dialogs with "Yes", "No", "Cancel", "Fuck off", "isTrue", and "42" buttons.



  • dcardani wrote:
    Open a Word .DOC file from an HTTP server inside an Internet Explorer window. Modify the file, then try to close it.
    
    What part of that do I understand?

    Oh, good one... I didn't catch that it probably won't be able to save the document... or does it open a "Save as..." dialog when you click yes?



  • @Brendan Kidwell said:

    My apologies if I or someone else has posted this one before, but here's a classic from Word (at least Word 2000) that's like nberardi's but not quite as nasty:

    Open a Word .DOC file from an HTTP server inside an Internet Explorer window. Modify the file, then try to close it. Word says:

    I feel like I'm in preschool and I'm being told to match up blocks to the correct holes.

    Trust me when I say that a lot of the people I work with need this.
    Mind, these are the people who have notebooks filled with "pathways" for stuff like copying and pasting.

     



  • @Manni said:

    @sao said:

    And that is why you derive your own class, or create a new one, that
    has 15 buttons, randomly arranged around the question, with all the
    bottoms describing a 'grey' answer (ie. maybe, possibly, i dont know,
    ask the cat)

    Only 15? And when you say that they're arranged randomly around the question, I offer an enhancement: Make the buttons move in a circular pattern around the question. Now the user may be even more vigilant about what button they think will answer the question, because now it's become target practice.



    or better yet, make it that 'on mouse over' of the button, it moves a random amount of space away... and therefore worse than target practice, as it is impossible to catch. make the only fixed button 'i give in, do as you wish'


  • No screen shot 'cause it's from a VT term, but a well known Canadian
    flight crew training device manufacturer reports this on thier VAX
    hosts:



    %Error 00000002, No name, No message.



    Every runtime crap out gave the same shit message, and every error exit
    in the source code exited with 2.  HowTF are you meant to debug
    that?



  • @rogthefrog said:

    I usually design my confirmation dialogs with "Yes", "No", "Cancel", "Fuck off", "isTrue", and "42" buttons.

    I think I once used one of your applications. Nice touch, rogthefrog.

    Story: Using this data extract application, I had to write unintuitive sort-of-but-not-quite-SQL where clauses. The application would do a syntax check on my feeble attempts and when it detected an error, it would pop up a message box with the following information:

    Title: "Syntax error"
    Message: "The foobar must include at least one baz"
    Huge button: "I knew that!"

    I like that. It gives me some sort of positive affirmation to push a button with the text "I knew that". Similarly, I wish all error message boxes had a "BUMMER!" button instead of that standard "OK" button. It is an error! It is not "OK"!




  • Best Error Message - Explained

    Hehe, Going back to original post:-

    All the error message is basically saying:

    WTF!!You didnt tell what all the stock values. Do you want me just to say theres nothing left in those particular items<yes>, or will i just make up a value<no>???

     

    If you choose no it prob gets the ending stock by taking the ending from the previous day,basically saying nothing of that item was used.

     

     


Log in to reply