Stupidest Dialog Box Evar

Monday, May 2, 2011

This is the dialog you get in thunderbird if you end up with multiple operations running – such as if you “download all mail” twice without realizing that a previous iteration is still running.

moz-screenshot-34.png

I could not possibly care that a background operation failed (and should be patiently and silently waiting until the other operation finishes, then try again itself; maybe, just maybe letting me know if I’m going to quit or shut down how many operations are pending in a single dialog).

But not only could no user ever care about the information provided by this dialog, it is done so as a modal dialog that steals focus. ZOMG, that’s the sort of user-hating bad design that makes people abandon a package.

Posted at 08:14:07 GMT-0700

Category: FreeBSDTechnology