DISQUS

Anze · 9 months ago

I'm the "OK / Cancel" kinda guy. :)

Chris Charabaruk · 9 months ago

Yeah, same here. Then again, I've been using Windows since 3.0, so I'm just used to Microsoft's HIG.

fry · 9 months ago

Just make the cancel button secondary - either make it text instead of the button, or colour it so the Save button will stand out. Having two equally "powerful" buttons that do opposite things is wrong no matter what their order in a form is - it makes you think.

Miha Ceglar · 9 months ago

Same dilemma here. At web forms i tend to avoid "cancel" and other destructive commands in general, because there is always some other way for user to escape. If "Cancel" or "Reset" is unavoidable, then i use a secondary button or a command link.

MaticL · 9 months ago

As speaking from the aspect of graphic design, the upper right -> lower left diagonal is the natural perception of the visual space. This is probably the cause of Apple's HIG statement to put the action button there, because it is visually the logic way of the "end of visual form". So the question probably is more: are the UI windows supposed to make you approve or disapprove the meaning they are communicating. Usually, this is also done by highlighting one choice, as fry said in the previous post.

Alex · 9 months ago

I'm clearly in the Cancel / OK crowd (Gnome-centric). Hitting lower-right to continue seems to me as the natural way to go forward in a process.

On the web I tend to place the continue/OK button in the lower-right, and the go-back/Cancel button in the lower-left. I think this better matches how the web works, as all browsers have go-back/go-forward buttons in the same order.

As an additional bonus, with both buttons far apart users can't accidentally hit the cancel-button and if you have any additional buttons (apply, clear) that don't move the user off the current page you can stick them in the center.

On showing the way that is most natural to users, you could parse the useragent to figure out how to order the buttons :)

(as a side-note, I'm really annoyed by web apps that place the Save/OK button _above_ the form that you're working on. Zimbra and a couple of other email apps suffer from this. Joomla makes it even worse by placing the Save button above the form, right-aligned with other buttons to the right of it. Madness).

Mario · 9 months ago

Hi, first of all - interesting article!

we prefer to use OK/Cancel order, but create hierarchy at the same time by letting only "OK" to appear as a button, and "Cancel" as an ordinary link.

Despite what conventions say, I personally think the main action should be first available to choose from, and for left-to-right languages this would put OK to the left side.

Cheers!