I design under the assumption that most people won't read the message, so 1. keep it short; 2. use button labels that make sense in the absence of the message; and 3. rephrase the message so that the buttons are a logical response to the message.
You might consider something like the following. You are about to permanently delete your selection. [Delete] [Cancel] You have unsaved changes. [Stay on this page] [Discard changes] On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Nonie <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm in the process of creating the "Delete" and "Save" > confirmations for a web app. In most cases, I prefer to label > buttons according to the action being performed. But in this case, in > order to answer the question being posed, it seems as though I should > be using "Yes" and "No" buttons. > > DELETE: "Are you sure you want to permanently delete your > selection?" > - [Yes] = delete and return to page > - [No] = skip deletion and return to page > > SAVE: "You are navigating away from the page. Would you like to save > your changes before proceeding?" > - [Yes] = save changes and proceed to selected page > - [No] = won't save changes and proceed to selected page > - [Cancel] = won't save changes and return to original page > > Would it make sense to replace "Yes" with "Delete" and "Save" > respectively so that the user knows exactly what action will occur, > even though it's not correctly answering the question? > > Does anyone know of any reference/s discussing proper verbiage for > dialog boxes? > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Reply to this thread at ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38477 > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
