[mythtv-users] Auto expire setting ambiguity

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Mon Oct 10 14:59:53 UTC 2005


On Monday 10 October 2005 9:50, Chris Pinkham wrote:
> > When I am in the recorded media section and selecting a recording to 
> > watch, I can hit a right arrow key and myth pops up a dialog box 
> > with  
> > various buttons - one of which says 'Auto Expire'.
> > 
> > Does this mean the recording it set to auto expire, or does it mean 
> > that  
> > if I press the button, it wiull THEN be set to autoexpire?  If I 
> > press  
> > it, and go back and look at it again, it now says 'Don't auto 
> > expire'.   
> 
> There are also "Play" and "Delete" buttons.  Do these buttons mean the
> recording is playing and has been deleted or do they mean that if you 
> click 
> them, then they will "Play" or "Delete" the recording? :)
> 
> > You really need a checkbox or something to make the useage of the 
> > button  
> > clear as it is quite ambiguous the way it is.
> 
> Doesn't seem abiguous at all if you think about all the other buttons
> that are there.  You click a button to do the action printed on the 
> button 
> label.  You Press "Play" on a CD player to play the CD, you press 
> "Stop" 
> to stop playing.  You press "Auto Expire" to turn ON Auto-Expire for a
> recording.  You press "Don't Auto Expire" to turn OFF Auto-Expire for
> a recording.

While I see your point, and even partially agree with it, I think that 
as a general UI design point, boolean or "toggle" options are kind of a 
special case.  With simple controls like "Play" or "Delete", the 
meaning of the text is obvious -- they describe an action that will be 
taken.  With controls that change according to some state, where there 
are more than 2 possible states, it's pretty easy to make the 
determination that the text of the button is reporting the current 
state (i.e., in the recording setup screen, the recording type item 
cycles through the available recording types, and it's obvious that the 
current text reflects the currently selected recording type).

With boolean or toggle controls, if a checkbox or other explicit text is 
not used it can be confusing to the user -- is the button an 
"action" (i.e., if I press "Auto Expire", does that turn auto-expire 
on), or is it a reflection of current status (i.e., it says "Auto 
Expire", so that means auto-expire is on)?  Toggling the option does 
not enlighten the user without cross-referencing the state (i.e., by 
looking at the icon, which many folks don't know about).

However, all is not lost:  it's not necessary to change the control to a 
checkbox.  All that is needed to remove ambiguity is to change the text 
to read "Auto Expire is ON" and "Auto Expire is OFF", or something 
similar.  This would actually reverse the current sense of the button 
from the user's point of view (it's currently an "action" button, this 
would make it a "status" button), but it would be absolutely clear that 
the button text reflected the current status.

-JAC


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