You haven't used windows long enough then. :P The only reason to confirm, is because you can't undo. If you can undo the deletion easily, you don't need to confirm.
The only reason not to make something undo-able is that you don't know how to. Not a very good reason. Go figure out how to make it undo-able. Everything that can be done with a computer, can be undone. I've even had software that can undo a save. (in a really dumb way) Trust the user. Let the user's actions guide you. They aren't dumb. They sometimes click things by accident, but that doesn't mean you should ask them the 100 other times when they meant to do it. Google has caught onto this idea recently. And their 'in-the-next-page' undo link is a good alternative to confirmation. But it is still confirmation. If they take even a single additional step, they lose undo. Multiple, modal, intelligent undo is the solution to all confirmation woes. That way, your confirmation messages can happen rarely and for things that really ARE unrecoverable. Not exactly sure what that would be, all the examples I can think of COULD have built into them undo. But if we are talking about, say, MySQL. If you drop a database, that is basically it for it unless you backed it up somewhere. Clearly, the solution is to have your software make a backup it can restore from, thus giving you undo, but there has to be software you might interface with that is poorly designed enough that you'd lose undo. It is only then when you'd need a confirmation message. That, or the case of very large data small space. Tightly packed data with limited space, like on a PDA. You may not be able to get away with full scale undo there. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41286 ________________________________________________________________ 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
