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.
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