As you may have guessed from my previous two posts, I have been paying far more attention than usual to how other IT professionals[*] work. The most recent one that caught my eye and has no doubt been done to death in UI circles is the OK and Apply buttons on dialogs. It’s funny to watch people first push the Apply button and then the OK one. The question is whether they don’t realise that pressing OK has addition affect of applying the changes, or that they don’t trust that just pressing OK is enough? I’m sure it’s the latter - a belt and braces approach.
I know how they are supposed to operate, but I suspect that’s only because I was doing a lot of UI work when Windows 95[#] appeared and so I was paid to know all the UX guidelines. Perhaps it’s time to take a trip down memory lane and visit the “Interface Hall of Shame” along with a quick Google search to find out if/when this UI faux pas was officially deprecated...
[*] I’m always looking to learn new tricks and techniques to be more effective and other IT professionals is obviously as good a place as any to look as this is (supposedly) their bread-and-butter.
[#] and Windows NT 3.5 with the shell upgraded to 4.0.
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