[IxDA Discuss] Confirmation dialogs - the devil himself, or a necessary evil?

[Rich Rogan]

It seems that stating that "confirmation dialogs are insulting and stupid,
to be avoided at all
costs " is a similar generalization as Jakobs, "99% of Flash is bad" or some
such statement by Mr. Usability.

Egregious and unthinking usage of any UI feature is "insulting and stupid,
to be avoided at all
costs". Generalizations shouldn't be strict rules for experienced
designers. There's got to be a plethora of good reasons to have
confirmation/cancel buttons, such as...

Engineering doesn't have resources to build in undo feature, so at a minimum
you want to make sure the user clicked the right button, (imagine usability
requirements getting cut for more feature requirements, anyone else heard of
this happening???)

Or user's may be model information then save when they're done. Saving
before they're finished modeling could cause big problems, a simple
confirmation slows the user down, and gets them to consider at least a bit
of what they're committing themselves too. Note the above scenario is
simplified as there can be draft state/undo/work flow/etc.

Other applications may be legal in nature where confirmation is a safeguard
for all parties.

and the list goes on...