Usage
Alerts have several typical uses:
- Error: informs the user than an operation could not continue or complete due to some insurmountable error.
- Warning: alerts that the current course of action could be in some way dangerous or detrimental, often offering the option of not proceeding.
- Info: presents a general notification about a recent event.
- Question: elicits some kind of response from the user, required to complete the current process.
Warning and question alerts typically offer two opposite options to close the dialog ("Allow/Deny", "OK/Cancel", "Yes/No") with the implicit assumption that one will proceed with the paused process that triggered the dialog, and the other one will interrupt the process without action.
A good practice in interface design, often included in Human Interface Guidelines, is to label each option with the precise effect that it will have on the process (for example, "Save/Don't save" in a dialog triggered while editing a document with unsaved changes).
Read more about this topic: Alert Dialog Box
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
“Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don’t are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn’t put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)