Usability Tip: Use Verbs as Labels on Buttons

This 'Usability Tip' is well-known and nevertheless absolutely true. See this document for further reading:<p><a href="http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conc...</a>

I have always extended this with the acronym "VAN". (I remind myself that programming is like driving a van.)<p>Verb Adjective Noun<p>"Enter New Customers" better than "Custs"<p>"Pay All Bills" better than "Accts Payable"<p>"Download Changed SKUs" better than "SKU Update"<p>You get the idea.<p>Not just for buttons, but for everything, even the stuff the user never sees.<p>So simple, yet so elusive.

I totally disagree; the OSX box is even more confusing. The problem is that you are performing two actions at the same time. First is closing the file and second is saving he file. For the box to be clear both issues have to be clear.<p>TextEdit: <i>Save</i> - Clearly this saves the document <i>Cancel</i> - I think this cancels the save, but does it close the file too? Not sure. <i>Don't Save</i> - Ok "Don't Save", but then what? Does this close the document or is it the same as Cancel? Wait, I'm not 100% sure what cancel does.<p>The WordPad message is a little clunky because you have to read what the box in order to know you are saving. However, once you read the box <i>Yes</i>/<i>No</i> is very clear, <i>cancel</i> still leaves a bit to be desired.<p>If you really want to be clear the buttons should say: <i>Save</i>, <i>Abandon changes</i>, <i>Go Back</i>

No!<p>The Apple Dialog has the same information repeated FOUR times.<p>#1 Do you want to save the changes you made in the document "test doc"<p>#2 Your changes will be lost if you don't save them.<p>#3 Don't Save<p>#4 Save<p>FOUR times I am told what I'm doing, "Saving". Yeah, each iteration has a little more information added to it. "Saving <i>what</i> document?" "Saving is important <i>why</i>?" "What is the <i>alternative</i> to saving?" Thanks for the slowly unfolding tutorial there...<p>Okay. Listen, the MSFT dialog works like this. It's a boolean. It's very short and simple: The answer is "yes" or "no". The user gets used to this yes/no format.<p>Save? yes/no<p>Print? yes/no [&#60;-- doesn't really exist]<p>Restore settings? yes/no<p>The consistency of this reduces one's need to actually read-and-process-and-understand what are extremely simple questions inherently.

There are a lot of things in a UI that are Verbs. But there are also lots of things that are Tools. Tools seem to be devices that are used for certain verbs, or a single verbs. If there are plural verbs, these should go together in a way that makes sense. (Example: a file selection dialog that lets you navigate folders and create new folders.)<p>Are Tools valid? Are they over used? Are they used enough?

Even Gnome has been doing this for several years now. I think Microsoft has good UI people, but none of them work on Windows. Strange, and sad.

OK and Cancel are verbs.

Ha I like how it's correctly done in the Mac popup, but not in the PC.