GUI Bloopers 2.0, 2nd Edition

4

Textual Bloopers

• Introduction
• Uncommunicative text
• Developer-centric text
• Misleading text

Introduction

One irony of graphical user interfaces is that most aren’t very graphical. The typical GUI contains a lot of text:

• ■ The labels for commands in menus or on buttons are mostly text.
• ■ Instructions are almost always text.
• ■ Most user input consists of typing or selecting words and numbers.
• ■ The labels on most controls and form fields are text.
• ■ The names users assign to data files and other data objects are always tex tual.
• ■ Error and warning messages are mainly textual, even if highlighted with a color or a symbol.

Therefore, do not underestimate the importance of text in GUIs.

Software designers ...