{"id":27623,"date":"2007-03-14T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/03\/14\/dont-require-your-users-to-have-a-degree-in-philosophy-episode-2\/"},"modified":"2007-03-14T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T10:00:00","slug":"dont-require-your-users-to-have-a-degree-in-philosophy-episode-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070314-00\/?p=27623","title":{"rendered":"Don&#039;t require your users to have a degree in philosophy, episode 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier, we learned that <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2006\/10\/18\/838994.aspx\"> help text is not the place to put logic puzzles<\/a>. Neither are dialog boxes.\n I ran across a configuration dialog box that had the item<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"m\"><p> Turn off Feature&nbsp;X <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> This is a negative-sense checkbox, which turns your dialog box into a logic puzzle. Checkboxes should be phrased positively.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"m\"><p> Use Feature&nbsp;X <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> (The only exception to the &#8220;no negative checkboxes&#8221; rule is the &#8220;don&#8217;t show me this message again&#8221; checkbox.)\n Negative-sense checkboxes turn into a game of confuse-the-user. &#8220;If I uncheck &#8216;Turn off Feature&nbsp;X&#8217;, then I&#8217;m not not running it.&#8221;\n It gives the impression that your program is trying to sneak something past the user the same way malware does, or the same way eight-year-olds do when they&#8217;re trying to bamboozle their parents.\n &#8220;Can I not not not not not not not go to Jimmy&#8217;s house?&#8221;\n <b>Nitpicker&#8217;s corner<\/b><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2006\/07\/13\/664448.aspx\"> Yes, Microsoft products break this rule<\/a>. That&#8217;s obviously part of the impetus behind this article. Calling out examples is just showing off. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier, we learned that help text is not the place to put logic puzzles. Neither are dialog boxes. I ran across a configuration dialog box that had the item Turn off Feature&nbsp;X This is a negative-sense checkbox, which turns your dialog box into a logic puzzle. Checkboxes should be phrased positively. Use Feature&nbsp;X (The only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-27623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Earlier, we learned that help text is not the place to put logic puzzles. Neither are dialog boxes. I ran across a configuration dialog box that had the item Turn off Feature&nbsp;X This is a negative-sense checkbox, which turns your dialog box into a logic puzzle. Checkboxes should be phrased positively. Use Feature&nbsp;X (The only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}