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

[Paul Nuschke]

>
> "Yes, there are hundreds of millions of people out there using Word who
> are all too familiar with confirmation dialogs, but it seems awfully
> funny to me that we haven't heard too many of them squawk about Outlook,
> which doesn't have them, and yet it purports to be a good little Windows
> app, too. The facts contradict our expectations."


Thanks for the comments, Alan.

Not trying to be contrarian, but Outlook does have prompts. Try to empty
your deleted items and you will get a prompt about it being permanent. Or
create a mail message and exit it- you will see the Yes/No/Cancel prompt.
The big difference is that you can delete from the calendar or your inbox
without getting hassled.

I think we are on the same page regarding the delete prompts--- for every
such prompt I've seen there is a fairly easy way to provide undo. Outlook
actually does this right (or close to right) by prompting only when you're
deleting your undo cache/trash bin. But I agree that MS is not exactly one
to look at for how to do things normally. For example, they provide a
recycling bin for XP, but then they insist on prompting every time you
delete anyway! (BTW, if this annoys anyone, you can turn it off by
right-clicking the bin and unchecking a box).

Paul