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Comment by infotainment | Hacker News Reader

Some good stuff here, but generally I’d disagree with:

> Prevent errors: As much as possible, design the interface so that users cannot make serious errors; for example, gray out menu items that are not appropriate and do not allow alphabetic characters in numeric entry fields (Section 3.3.5

This sounds nice in theory, but in practice too many guardrails like this will just confuse users. “Why can’t I type text here??” It’s often better to allow mistakes but also offer immediate explanatory feedback if something is incorrect.

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> It’s often better to allow mistakes but also offer immediate explanatory feedback if something is incorrect.

That is just another form of error prevention: in the end erroneous data will not be submitted.

> It's often better to allow mistakes but also offer immediate explanatory feedback if something is incorrect.

Which is what the rule actually describes.

> If users make an error, the interface should offer simple, constructive, and specific instructions for recovery. For example, users should not have to retype an entire name-address form if they enter an invalid zip code but rather should be guided to repair only the faulty part. Erroneous actions should leave the interface state unchanged, or the interface should give instructions about restoring the state.

I'm very confused by some of the attempts at "gotchas" in this discussion that are just restating what the list (and context paragraphs) already say as if it didn't say it.

Add a tooltip on disabled inputs.

A thousand times this! All disabled menu items and inputs should always have a tooltip or other means of explaining why they are disabled and what to do to enable them, with no exceptions.

Tooltips seem to have gone out of style in this touch-first world.

Good UIs still use tooltips, you just have to click or drag when in touch mode.

There's also the awkward problem of most native tooltips being plain-text-only, when text is not actually sufficient for every problem (such as international text). And emulated "tooltip" widgets are slow, buggy, etc.

From what I've noticed, the touch-friendly replacement for tooltips, for elements like form entry, is the info icon (the circle with the i in it). I actually find this to be even more useful than the tooltip (when space allows) because I know there is more context I can get at a glance.

> will just confuse users. “Why can’t I type text here??” It’s often better to allow mistakes but also offer immediate explanatory feedback if something is incorrect.

No, it's better to prevent a mistake and offer immediate explanatory feedback why something is incorrect. For example, the answer to "why can't I type text here??" would be a message explaining that no text is allowed, only numbers.

Or, as is possible on mobile, make the input mode change to numbers-only

Yes, and make your now useless alpha keys into a perfectly usable numpad so you don't have to use the worse horizontal numbers row or shift your hand to the actual numpad!

uio 123

jkl 456

m,. 789

I can't tell which browsers or UI libraries do this, but do you know those date pickers that try to maintain a valid date with every keypress? It's such a horrible user experience if you try to type a date by hand.

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