Question

After reading Jeff’s blog post and being fairly new to GUI programming, I’m wondering what the limits are on applying the “opposite of Fitt’s Law.” For example, is it a good idea to separate “Yes” and “No” on a dialog screen, or would that conflict with another programming rule? E.g. alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/9b6d34c344.png and alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/b3e9223b44.png

Answer 1

I don’t believe things that are radically unrelated should even be on the same axis. Things which are related but opposing, such as Yes | No dialogs should be separated sufficiently that there is no chance of an accidental mis-click, but more importantly should follow standard conventions. In other words, don’t do No | Yes, follow the convention of Yes | No | Cancel, where the rightmost buttons preserve the same state–because many people make an error by finding buttons by position rather than reading the text.