5 ms·

I try to remember how the general demise of OK/ cancel buttons came about. There was a time when almost all of the more complex tools in an application would us

I try to remember how the general demise of OK/ cancel buttons came about. There was a time when almost all of the more complex tools in an application would use modal dialog boxes without an ability to preview the result before the user clicked OK. This was rightfully deemed inadequate and eventually tbe "modeless" side panel was invented, and its lesser sibling, the "apply" button. This gave users more tools that allowed instant previews. And these were mostly good changes. But somehow the idea of modeless UI spread into all parts of UIs, including settings dialogs, where it sometimes doesn't feel appropriate at all. Why did that happen? Why is there no consistent pattern anymore for discarding unwanted changes in a dialog?

stkdump 2y ago
> I try to remember how the general demise of OK/ cancel buttons came about I think there was a time when dialogs had all three: Apply, Ok, Cancel. I formed the habit of clicking Apply and then Ok back then. Either way, I think Ok went away when smartphones were introduced, because they traded checkboxes with those horizontal slider buttons. Then someone had the idea what works on a smartphone should work everywhere and now we have that everywhere.
- Freebytes 2y ago
  The Apply button was pointless. OK is supposed to apply. Apply simply made the changes, but it did not dismiss the dialog. Apply seemed confusing to most users and there should have only been two buttons. If you click OK, there was no reason to keep the dialog visible since you should be able to click the same thing (easily) to get back to it. If the Apply button was necessary because you could not easily get back to the dialog, then it was a problem with the interface before the dialog opened. That is, it should be easy to open dialogs, close them, and open them again.
mike_hearn 2y ago
That change is explained in the human interface guidelines of the era. There was some debate in the GNOME world when this was first implemented and the rationale was explained in threads like this one: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/hig/2002-January/msg00079.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/hig/2002-January/msg00079.ht...

stkdump 2y ago

> I try to remember how the general demise of OK/ cancel buttons came about I think there was a time when dialogs had all three: Apply, Ok, Cancel. I formed the habit of clicking Apply and then Ok back then. Either way, I think Ok went away when smartphones were introduced, because they traded checkboxes with those horizontal slider buttons. Then someone had the idea what works on a smartphone should work everywhere and now we have that everywhere.

Freebytes 2y ago
The Apply button was pointless. OK is supposed to apply. Apply simply made the changes, but it did not dismiss the dialog. Apply seemed confusing to most users and there should have only been two buttons. If you click OK, there was no reason to keep the dialog visible since you should be able to click the same thing (easily) to get back to it. If the Apply button was necessary because you could not easily get back to the dialog, then it was a problem with the interface before the dialog opened. That is, it should be easy to open dialogs, close them, and open them again.

mike_hearn 2y ago

That change is explained in the human interface guidelines of the era. There was some debate in the GNOME world when this was first implemented and the rationale was explained in threads like this one: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/hig/2002-January/msg00079.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/hig/2002-January/msg00079.ht...