Comments on: The great OK/Cancel button dilemma

By: Pierre Thibault

Pierre Thibault — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:06:15 +0000

In KDE 3 the default was OK/Cancel but it was possible to change it for Cancel/OK by editing a resource. I prefer the last one. Don’t know how to make the same change with KDE 4.

By: Mugunth Kumar

Mugunth Kumar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:44:08 +0000

My two cents…
http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/tech/elements-of-usability-design-okcancel-vs-cancelok-is-it-just-a-matter-of-taste/

By: peter

peter — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:06:35 +0000

I had exactly the same dilemma yesterday. Apart from making visually OK button primary and Cancel secondary, I guess it all comes down to what your users prefer. For users more familiar with Windows it's OK/Cancel, for Mac-s it's Cancel/OK. Look at you analytics data and probably swallow you Mac pride Or go bold

By: Mario

Mario — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:14:34 +0000

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!

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:40:15 +0000

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).

By: MaticL

MaticL — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:12:28 +0000

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.

By: Miha Ceglar

Miha Ceglar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:53:36 +0000

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.

By: fry

fry — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:35:51 +0000

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.

By: Chris Charabaruk

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:24:04 +0000

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

By: Anze

Anze — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:55:36 +0000

I'm the “OK / Cancel” kinda guy.