Someone on this list (Richard Gaskin?) once observed that the difference between a tool and a product is that a tool only has to be able to be used properly, whereas a product has to be unable to be used improperly. A well-designed application should anticipate as much as possible users' likely confusion and prevent users from doing things by mistake. Error messages are part of this process -- but they should be more in the form of "in order to do x I must know y and z, please clarify…" or "did you mean a or b?" or "I'm sorry, you can't do x in this context, do you want me to…." Even better, the interface should be designed so that even these messages are encountered rarely -- consistency is a crucial part of this. The earlier Apple OSes used to do a good job on this, mostly. Later versions not so much. Windows has always done a lousy job with consistency -- I don't know how many times I've found that I can't paste into a Windows system window.
Sorry, you got me started…. -- Peter Peter M. Brigham pmb...@gmail.com http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig On May 11, 2014, at 5:24 PM, Alejandro Tejada wrote: > Probably, the point of Mr. Donald Norman is: > > Reduce as much as possible the chance of > human error... (Richmond wrote about this > key concept in a previous message: affordance) > http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html > > "A truly collaborative system would tell me the requirements > before I did the work. If there are special ways you want > stuff entered, tell me before I enter it, not afterwards. > > How many times must we endure the indignity of typing in > a long strong only to be told afterwards that it doesn't fit > the machine's whims (more accurately, doesn't fit the > whims of the programmer)?" > > Yes, that is the point: The program should guide the users > and collaborate with them... effectively stopping them > of making ineffective or potentially dangerous actions > and guiding users in a smart way. > > This sounds really difficult to do. It's very difficult to stop > users from doing what they want, but not impossible. > > It's possible, but... it's wise? > > and that is another difficult question > to answer... > > Al > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Error-Messages-Are-Evil-tp4679382p4679389.html > Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > _______________________________________________ > use-livecode mailing list > use-livecode@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode