Use of KMessageBox::warningYesNo for continue/cancel questions.

[Waldo Bastian]

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On Friday 20 June 2003 17:41, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Friday 20 June 2003 05:29, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > As I hopefully explained on irc already I think that the use of
> > KMessageBox::warningYesNo for confirmation dialogs is broken. If the
>
> so that everyone else is aware of the details, let me fill them in:
>
> in Konqueror file management mode, if you go to delete a file or files you
> get a confirmation dialog (until you check the "Don't show this again" box,
> of course). the default action in this dialog was "Delete", which is a
> destructive action that is exceptionally difficult for the user to undo (if
> at all possible in some situations). such destructive actions should never
> be the default action, even if, as it is in this case, the message box is a
> confirmation. so i added KMessageBox::warningYesNo, made it default to the
> "No" button and made konq_operations use that instead of
> KMessageBox::warningContinueCancel.
>
> > default for confirmation dialogs should be "Cancel" then that should be
> > changed in KMessageBox::warningContinueCancel.
>
> i've been running with exactly that patch locally and i can say
> definitively that it is a non-starter: too many applications use warning*
> as means to get confirmation for non-destructive actions. for instance,
> KMail uses such a KMessageBox to confirm sending (if you have that turned
> on). putting the focus on the Cancel button makes many areas of KDE harder
> to use, as you noted would be the case on irc. this is why i didn't commit
> that change. note that this was also my initial feeling, and why i added
> warningYesNo that defaults to "No" and didn't simply change
> warningContinueCancel's behaviour.

You mention KMail but KMail uses warnngYesNoCancel to confirm sending. It will 
surely not be affected by a change in  warningContinueCancel's behaviour.

> most usages of the warning* message boxes in KDE are not confirming
> destructive actions or actions that otherwise should be guarded against.
> changing that default would result in a much less pleasing KDE usage
> experience (one i suffered through for a few days already ;)
>
> > Will you revert your changes yourself?
>
> if that's the wish of the project, sure...
>
> in the case of deleting files, which was the only thing affected by my
> commit, reverting would be a step backwards IMHO. Waldo, perhaps you could
> elucidate on why you feel that this change is broken...

The case at hand is a matter of confirming an action and warningContinueCancel 
is the appropriate action for that. The Yes/No variants are for situations 
where you have two more or less equally-likely possibilities. (E.g. KMail 
asking you whether to Send Now or Send Later) Using the Yes/No variant simply 
because it happens to put the default on a button of your liking ignores the 
semantics.

Konqueror should use warningContinueCancel in the cases that you changed, and 
if that doesn't give the desired result then warningContinueCancel should be 
adjusted.

Cheers,
Waldo
- -- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com
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