Chapter 18 -- Appropriate Defaults Are Cool

Chapter 18

Good user interfaces help users get their work done by eliminating unnecessary effort through the use of appropriate defaults. Programmers often do not provide appropriate defaults, either by omission or through the mistaken belief that you can't provide defaults if you're not really sure what the user wants to do.

Defaults occur in many circumstances in a typical program, such as when a program is started, an object is created, or a dialog box is displayed. It is a bad sign when a program always starts the same way, objects are always created with the same properties, or dialog boxes are always initialized to the same settings, regardless of the user's previous input. Good user interfaces keep track of the user's input and use it to determine default values whenever appropriate. Good user interfaces also save the user's previous settings—like open documents, and window sizes and locations—and restore them when the program is restarted.

Providing appropriate defaults is just one of many techniques for achieving the ultimate goal of eliminating unnecessary repetitive tasks, a subject I'll address in detail in Chapter 24. This chapter focuses on setting defaults, most often in dialog boxes.