Setting up a new Windows PC today and not loving the browser warnings.
The messages, as I recall them: “You are about to submit the form. It’s dangerous.”, “You’re going to leave the page. It’s dangerous.”, “This page is encrypted. It’s dangerous.”, “This page is not encrypted. It’s dangerous.”, “This is H20. It’s dangerous.”
So my question is, who’s benefitting? At this stage, the majority of internet users have been submitting forms and using encrypted pages for 5+ years. And if they’re a newbie, is it any more useful to them? (Hint: No.)
The only thing it does is add overhead to setting up a new system. You have to stop and think, “Hmmm is this a negative, double-negative, or triple-negative question? Ah, okay, I think I’ll leave the checkbox unchecked so as to imply I don’t want to not submit the form. And also, I’ll leave the ‘Don’t show me again box’ so it doesn’t not show me again.”
Summary:
- Only provide dialog boxes that are useful, otherwise users will ignore them all.
- Avoid not excluding negative phrasing in your options. Even if the most likely value is negative, you should still phrase it as a positive. ("Remember this" as opposed to "Forget this" or "Don't remember this.")
