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If a user clicks a cancel button should it pop up a dialogue asking for confirmation?
If so, should this be all the time, or only when there are unsaved changes on a form?
No unless it's something that is very vital/potentially harmful. Having popups followed by popups is annoying.
If canceling the action will destroy data or a device, yes. For instance, canceling in the middle of upgrading the firmware of some device.
If the action being performed takes a long time and an accidental cancelation will require starting over, yes.
For instance, I don't find the pop-up here on StackOverflow annoying when I decide to close a tab rather than making an edit I started on one of my questions.
"Cancel" means to give up on an action before it begins. If the action has already started, the command should be named "Stop" instead. That makes it clear to the user that the button might interrupt something in mid-stream.
A real Cancel action doesn't need confirmation because it doesn't cause any problems. A Stop action might, but only if stopping partway through could leave things in a messed-up state. (And in that case, you should consider finding a way to have the stop back out all the already-made changes so that the state reverts back to what it was before the action began. This isn't always possible, of course, like if you're deleting files.)
It really depends on the situation.
Encoding a video for example, a process that may take hours, should have a confirmation, just because you may accidentally hit the button at 99%.
The initialization process of an installer or other app, on the other hand, doesn't need a confirmation since it can typically be restarted quickly enough and doesn't take long to begin with.
If clicking Cancel starts a process that will potentially take a long time (let's say it needs to reverse changes), the user should be informed about that, possibly with a popup, but some text next to the button might suffice as well.
The general rule is to minimize Confirmation Dialogs as much as possible, if for example it could be replaced with an Undo action. I don't think this applies to most Cancel buttons though.
Use the following algorithm to determine the answer to your question:
if (1-p)*w > p*a then ask for confirmation
where
p is the probability that the user really wanted to cancel (0.7 or so)
w is the amount of lost (work-) time due to inadvertent cancelling
a is the time lost due to an anoying confirmation (5 seconds or so)
Of course you have to estimate p, w and a. Using my default values, you should ask for confirmation when unintentional canceling would cost the user more than 10.5 seconds of time.
So, in the case of a long-time operation, e.g. encoding a video, you shouldn't ask if the user clicks cancel within 10 seconds after starting that task. In the case of data entry, don't ask if the form is still completely empty, but ask if the user has already entered data.
Make the action easy to do without confirmation (don't annoy your users!). But, also make it easy to undo. Read Alan Cooper's About Face for lots of good UI advice.
Basically, if undo-ing a cancel is difficult, time-consuming, or impossible, you should prompt the user. Those are usually the case when the user has done some actions that they might wish to preserve (e.g. writing a blog post and closing a tab, updating firmware on a hardware device, running system updates, installing large pieces of software) instead of just deleting the current state. After all, sometimes the cancel button may be clicked accidentally. You just need to use common sense to determine whether it would be a really bad experience for the user if an operation was accidentally cancelled (which would call for a cancel prompt), or whether they could easily restart whatever operation was accidentally cancelled without much loss. The strategy I use for solving such problems is by putting myself in the user's shoes, i.e. imagining myself as a user of this program. How would I feel if I accidentally clicked cancel??? If that mentality is grim, add a prompt in case.
It would be better to not prompt, but make it easy to undo the cancellation once it is done, if possible. GMail does this well. You click 'Delete', it deletes, but you get a link at the top to say 'Undo delete'.
I think the answer in terms of data.
If user made changes on data , not talking about clicking somewhere on interface, user should be asked to confirm exiting.
But if no change happenned, no reason for confirmation. Because confirmation is an effort for user.
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I am writing a weather program that calls an API for data. One of the flags available is a preferred language, of which there are about 45 options. This leads me to the question.
What is the most efficient way to display all the language options, then allow user input, then check for valid input?
My best idea is a loop that prints all the options from a file. The user then inputs an option. Their selection is checked against the list to find a match. If there is a match then the program continues. If not, they are prompted again.
Is this the best way to go about this? I'm trying to make this program as efficient and professional looking as possible as I'm using it for my portfolio.
My best idea is a loop that prints all the options from a file. The user then inputs an option. Their selection is checked against the list to find a match. If there is a match then the program continues. If not, they are prompted again.
Is this the best way to go about this? I'm trying to make this program as efficient and professional looking as possible as I'm using it for my portfolio.
There are always multiple competing goals (single-thread performance, scalability, features, flexibility/extendibility, code readability, fault tolerance). For well designed code, its good to understand the importance of each of these goals for each piece of code (and good to understand that these importances can be different for different pieces of code in the same project). For this specific piece of code; I'd say that flexibility/extendibility (e.g. the ability to add new languages easily later) is the most important, followed by code readability (the ability to understand the code later, and find/fix bugs in it). The least important are scalability (e.g. how much performance increases when number of CPUs increases) then single-thread performance; because the code only needs to work once and is held back by the speed that a human can type anyway.
Is this the best way to go about this? I'm trying to make this program as efficient and professional looking as possible as I'm using it for my portfolio.
In terms of "human computer interaction"; the best way is to make it impossible for the user to enter invalid data (e.g. a drop down list with a well predicted default to avoid the need for a "not set yet" option). The second best way is "active status" - specifically, for every "user input event" (key press, mouse click, etc) a status field corresponding to the input field/control is updated to either indicate that the field/input is in an acceptable state, or provide the reason why it's not; where its impossible for the user to continue (e.g. because an "OK" button is disabled) until all of status fields are saying that the input is acceptable. For both of these options there is no need to validate the submitted input afterwards.
Sadly; for "command line", it's almost impossible to use the best way and almost impossible to use the 2nd best way.
In other words; you need to forget about performance/efficiency (because that's the least important); and then forget about writing software that is good/user-friendly (because it's command line).
The question then is; what is the "least bad" option? For this; I'd start by assuming that the data for each language is stored in a separate file (or directory?) where the file name is usable for display purposes; and all of the data is in a specific directory (e.g. a "project/lang" directory that contains a "project/lang/UK_English" file, a "project/lang/Spanish" file, etc). In this case you can get a list of files in the "project/lang" directory, sort them in alphabetical order, and use them to display a list of numbered options ("1) Spanish", "2) UK English", ..). Then if/when the user selects an option you can validate it (and report any errors if the user entered a bad character, a number that's too high, etc, then ask the user to retry); and load the right file for whichever language they chose (and report any errors if there's a problem with the file and ask the user to choose something else).
That way; people/translators can just create new files, and none of the code will need to be modified.
For a comparison; the fastest way is to use constant strings (e.g. puts("1) Spanish\n2) UK English\n\nEnter language choice:")); and to predict what the user will choose (e.g. based on keeping track of what they chose last time) and "pre-fetch and pre-parse" in the background (so that hopefully all the work is done for the correct choice before the user actually makes a choice), with the ability to quickly cancel the "pre-fetch and pre-parse" work if the user makes a choice that wasn't predicted. This would be extremely good for performance (likely "instant") but extremely bad (inflexible, over-complicated, too hard to maintain).
Given a simple textbox to answer a question, how would you go about saving answers as the user types? Assuming that the answer is upserted.
Using a somewhat naive example of an onChange handler and saving answers using an API within that onChange, I ran into two problems:
Sends what seems to be too many patch requests from client to API since it's every time the input textbox answer changes.
If using postgres upsert or creating your own, then the second request made by the onChange handler may not see the first if the user is typing quickly, creating duplicate records for that textbox (two answers for one question)
I need to execute queries beforehand to get necessary relationship values before updating, so the HTTP wait time is fairly long. Fixing this now, but seems to not address the above two issues.
I thought of only saving once the user presses spacebar, but that seems hacky. Normally of course I'd save after clicking a submit button, but in this case it must be as the user types.
Any suggestions / comments? Cheers.
EDIT:
Also tried saving within onBlur.. But this doesn't always get called depending on where the user clicks.
Does it have to patch the data for every keypress or can you use a delay?
For instance...
User starts typing: Register the event, set a timeout for say 3 seconds
If the user keeps typing: reset that timeout back to the full 3s
If the user pauses typing + 3s passes: patch the data with new value
When the user resumes typing: set another timeout
I'm using the ToastBar messages with timeout 6 seconds. If I click another button within 6 seconds which will display another toastbar message, second one will overlap with first one in some instances. How can a dispose first message and display second message without overlapping if the button is clicked before timeout occurs. Please advise.
ToastBar.showErrorMessage("Test Message", 6000);
Thanks
Make sure you are always invoking this method from the EDT and not from a separate thread e.g. the network thread. Use the edt error detection tool in the simulator to try and track such issues.
I have the same issue. First I tried to make sure that I do not call each message using the same object reference, but also use local variable instances to allow the Garbage Collector (GC) dispose them since the instance is discarded when the task is done.
However, this may take some time and the message still appears overlapping or even worse, it repeats itself with out a trigger, but less likely (infrequent) now because the GC collects the object.
It may be tempting to call the GC manually if possible, but then you need to assess performance impact.
I have not attempted yet the approach I am about to suggest, but let me know what you think.
Making it so, that ToastBar messages appear one on top of the other when triggered. Maybe a List<ToastBar> object or other similar may prove useful. This may be described as a ToastBar "buffer".
The other way around is to clear() the message but then if it is too long it will not allow the user the necessary time to read the feedback.
I have this in my TODO list but will follow up when I make some additional progress.
Due to a major time constraint, need to stick with invoking rasphone.exe from my c program, rather than best approach of using RAS API's. From my code, when the rasphone pop's up a dialler window to the user, if the user click's on cancel button, i have to stop blocking another set of code.
Ultimately, i need to handle the rasphone returns to control my code flow based on the Success/Failure-Cancel. How to do this? Also, is there any other possibility for silent dialling without any popup?I hope no, as its discussed.
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This isn't really a programming question, more of an ideas question. Bear with me.
My sister gave me a well-used Nokia N95. I don't really need it, but I wanted it to do some programming for it. It supports a few languages, of which I can do Python.
My question is this: what to do with it? If I think about it, it has a lot to offer: i can program the GPS, motion sensor, wireless internet, sound and visual capture; it has a lot of hard disk space, it plays sound and video and so on.
The combinations seem limitless. The way I see it, it is a device that is easily always on me, has access to a huge data repository (the internet, and my personal data in it) and can be aware if I'm sitting at home, at work, or moving about somewhere. It could basically read my google calendar to check if I should be somewhere I'm not -- perhaps give me the bus schedule to get to where I should be. It could check if it's close to my home and therefore my home PC bluetooth/wifi. Maybe grab my recent work documents from my desktop computer, along with the latest Daily Show, for the bus journey to work. It could check my library account to see if any of my books are due, and remind me to take them with me in the morning. Set up an alarm clock based on what shift I have marked in my google calendar.
Basically I have a device that can analyze my movements in time (calendars with my data etc) and space (gps, carrier cell ids). By proxy, it could identify context situations -- I can store my local grocery store gps coordinates or cell mast ids and it could remind me to bring coffee.
Like I said, the possibilities seem limitless, and therefore baffling. Does anyone else have these pseudofantastical yearnings to program something like this? Or any similar ideas? How could this kind of device integrate into -- and help -- your life?
I'm hoping we could do some brainstorming.
"Gotta Leave" - A reminder that figures out the bus time, how far you are from a stop on your bus and shows a countdown till you "Could" leave (green), "Should" Leave (yellow), "Must" leave (orange), and "Gotta Run to get there" (red).
As inputs it needs what bus number you want to ride. You turn it on, it finds you, finds your closest few bus stops, estimates your walking speed at 2/mph and calculates when you need to leave where you are to get to the bus with 5 minutes waiting or less.
You should just pick any one and implement it.
It doesn't matter where you start, more that you actually do start. Don't concentrate on the destination, take a step and see what the journey holds.
Do it for a laugh to start and your expectation will be set right for both when you do find your killer app and when you don't.
"Phone home" - an interface to report home if you send a message to your phone that it is lost / stolen. Must be a silent operation from the phone holder's perspective
Options:
Self destruct mode to save your data from prying eyes
Keep calling with it's location every 10 minutes until an unlock is sent indicating the phone is found.
This is the same problem I face with the android (albeit java instead of python). The potential is paralyzing :)
I'd recommend checking out what libraries have already been written for doing cool stuff on that phone, and then building off of them- It's a system that provides inspiration, direction, and a good head start. For instance, on the android side, I'm fooling around with "zxing", a library that lets you read barcodes via the cellphone's camera. That's it's own sub-universe of possibilities, but at least it gives me a direction to go. "do cool things with information about products physically nearby"
"Late for Work" - Determines if you are not at work, buzzes you with a reminder and preps the phone to call into the sick line. Could be used if you are going to be late as well.
Inputs: Your sick line number. Time you should be at work. Where your home is, where your work is
Optional:
Send a text message
Post to an online in/out board
If you are still at home, sound an alarm
If you are still at home, call in sick, if you are not at home sent a "I'm going to be late" message
Comedy Option:
- If you don't respond to ten alarms, dial 911
To add on to what others have said, come up with some kind of office-GPS (via WiFi maybe? Does it have WiFi?) and tell you when you need to go to a meeting.