What Defaults Are Appropriate?

The goal of selecting appropriate defaults is to provide defaults that reduce the amount of work needed to accomplish a task. A good default doesn't have to be exactly right all the time. Being close is good enough if it reduces the amount of effort to perform a task. For example, when you create a new document in Microsoft Word and then save the document, Word creates a default filename from the text in the first line of the document—specifically, it uses all the text up to the first punctuation character. This default makes sense because the first line of a document is often the document title. While this default filename isn't always right, I find it usually takes a simple edit to get what I want. Even if it is completely wrong, the default filename is automatically selected, so all I have to do is type in the filename I want.

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A good default doesn't have to be right all the time.

This example is fairly unusual. Most often the best default is the last setting that the user selected. After all, if the user wanted that setting last time, most likely the user will want it next time as well. For example, when working in Microsoft Visual C++, if I selected to optimize my code by size in my last project, chances are I will want to optimize my next project by size. (Unfortunately, Visual C++ does not work this way. It always uses the same default settings.) However, as you'll see below, there are several circumstances where using the last setting is a poor choice. The best rule in general is to give the default value that is most likely to be right, given how the setting is used. Remember that just because you can't be certain what the user wants doesn't mean you can't have good defaults.

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Give the default value that is most likely to be right, given how the setting is used.

Actions performed automatically by a program should not affect the defaults. For example, if a program saves a file to the Temp folder, that action should not change the program's default folder. Defaults should change only as a result of user input.

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Defaults should change only as a result of user input.



Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
ISBN: 0735605866
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 334
Authors: Everett N McKay
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