Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar (2007)

8/21/2026 at 3:12:54 PM

I’ve always loved how TextEdit’s “don’t save” button is actually a red button that says “delete” for unsaved text files.

There’s no ambiguity there. The user is very well-informed that they’re about to quit and lose the document they were working on.

by Grombobulous

8/21/2026 at 3:41:14 PM

The example of Pages from the article has actually since been changed to do the same thing.

Red "Delete" on the far left, then on the far right a gray/neutral "Cancel" button, and an orange (the app's primary color) "Save"

by hbn

8/21/2026 at 3:53:47 PM

"Delete" is the wrong verb, suggests I'm deleting the file, which I'm not. Sure you could say, well you're deleting the unsaved changes, but this isn't what it means on any other computer or even in other Mac apps.

The same update (Lion?) ruined saving overall. Apple has insisted that apps should never have a "save as." You can hold opt to do it anyway, but it silently overwrites the original too. Maybe or maybe not lets me revert, and idk where even those revisions are stored. Apple might've hoped this catches on, but again nothing else does it this way. I get they want me to duplicate the file first, but no, I already made changes that I want to save-as, it's too late to duplicate.

If they were going for blurring the line between memory and disk, that didn't work either because there is still the concept of saved vs unsaved changes (that can get "deleted"). It's not like Google Docs.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 5:22:10 PM

I think you’re technically correct but that “delete” gets the right thought across to someone who doesn’t understand how files work. You’re deleting whatever you have in front of you.

I agree about Save As…

Maybe that could have just been updated to “Save a Copy” or something like that. I don’t really understand why it’s a hidden option.

by Grombobulous

8/21/2026 at 4:40:17 PM

A better verb would be "Discard"

by bogdanoff_2

8/21/2026 at 4:46:40 PM

Yes exactly. Which I think is sometimes said.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 4:02:09 PM

You are deleting the document from your computer.

In some instances this could be a file on disk. But it does not have to be.

by fmbb

8/21/2026 at 4:03:32 PM

It's not deleted. I already have a.txt. I edit it then quit without saving. a.txt is still there.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 2:57:34 PM

One of the most influential books I ever read was About Face by Alan Cooper. What he said about this bad modal dialogue is that you should simply not ask the user, and let them undo later.

This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow for iOS later on. And now it's common in web apps.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118766571?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...

by thefourthchime

8/21/2026 at 3:05:47 PM

Remember in 1990 (the pictures are from around then) there wasn't unlimited fast disk space. There was a good chance you were saving to a floppy disk which not only was slow, but might not be in the drive all the time. At least in 1990 you could assume a hard drive - but you couldn't safely assume there was enough free space on the drive to save anything, since 40mb drives filled fast.

35 years latter we live in a different world where you can assume an unlimited fast data connection to a data center. Saving and allowing undo is possible today.

by bluGill

8/21/2026 at 4:54:28 PM

Even in 2005 when I was a kid using computers in school, I had some larger docs where constant autosave would've been unreasonable. Word had a timer that was like 5 minutes.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 3:50:31 PM

I once heard Cooper talk at a conference. He said that he was indeed the father of Visual Basic, in the sense that he had a little participation at the inception but most of the work was done by someone else. I think you can draw a line between that kind of self deprecation and the ego level required to look through someone else's eyes and design good UI.

by delichon

8/21/2026 at 3:04:03 PM

In the world of 2TB SSD’s, it does seem silly to risk inadvertently deleting an important ~2kb word document.

by TheJoeMan

8/21/2026 at 3:29:19 PM

It took me quite a while to get used to the "save continuously, keep revision history" of Google Docs, but in that context I've gotten used to it. For something like code, or image edits, etc. I still prefer explicit "Save" or "Save As..." operations that I control, because quite often I get myself boxed into something that I just want to throw away and start over.

by SoftTalker

8/21/2026 at 4:02:08 PM

You might like "save continously but call it 'history', offer a save button but that just names the current revision"

This lets you throw away and start over, but also gives you infinite undo even after "loading" an older version.

by two_handfuls

8/21/2026 at 4:17:11 PM

For me this is what I use Git for, even if I have no intention of pushing to a remote repository. So I suppose some of Git's functionality could be considered redundant if only the applications would be generous about saving history and deltas.

by MetaWhirledPeas

8/21/2026 at 4:16:25 PM

We could have both. The "save" button just becomes a pointer to a specific point in the revision history, the same way we already have that with git.

by gtowey

8/21/2026 at 3:50:45 PM

Well we're rapidly approaching a world going back to 256GB (or smaller) SSDs because VC money is being used to buy up all semiconductor and HDD output by AI hyperscalers. Everything will end up cloud storage, you'll own nothing and like it.

Also the minimum Word document is far larger than 2KB. IIRC it's about 10x that size for an empty Word document (docx).

by giantrobot

8/21/2026 at 3:00:43 PM

My favorite is apps that offer a way to cancel a long-running operation, where clicking "cancel" on the confirm dialog cancels the cancellation.

by chuckadams

8/21/2026 at 3:47:09 PM

Sydney Padua's awesome, mostly true, steampunk graphic novel "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" jokes about the error messages that might have produced by the difference engine. One example occurs when a character tries to stop a sequence that may or may not destroy a precious manuscript:

Annulation lever activated!

Do you wish to continue?

Engage STOP lever to continue. Engage CONTINUE lever to stop.

Time remaining 5..4..3...

by KineticLensman

8/21/2026 at 4:15:46 PM

It's actually more than yes/no/cancel. There's also a red X. I only know from experience that it's usually the same as cancel, but not always.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 3:27:06 PM

1. LibreOffice's recover files dialogue series of steps is frustrating like this.

2. Still better than "Yes, Ask me Later" dialogues that are so insulting to users.

by SubiculumCode

8/21/2026 at 3:51:28 PM

Q: Do you think Microsoft¹ understands and respects the idea of consent? A: Yes / Ask Again Later

--------

[1] Or the BBC, or whoever, a great many are guilty of this sort of thing.

by dspillett

8/21/2026 at 4:14:12 PM

PedOS is so bad that I would actually try to use Linux instead nowadays if I didn't have a Mac. Even though I fully assume that any Linux distro will be endless problems.

by frollogaston

8/21/2026 at 3:43:37 PM

This is more or less the reason why bool is not recommended as a type, instead use a enums which add semantic value

by f1shy

8/21/2026 at 3:59:08 PM

    enum DoesUserWantToSave {
      Yes,
      No,
      Cancel,
    }

:p

by QuantumNomad_

8/21/2026 at 2:33:21 PM

(A)bort? (R)etry? (F)ail?

by teeray

8/21/2026 at 2:42:54 PM

Rip John C. Dvorak, writer of the Abort/Retry/Fail column from PC Magazine.

On a different note, never underestimate the value of a modal dialog that gives you a chance to retry an IO operation that failed. Loose USB cables and network shares over Wifi can make those happen a lot more often.

by Dwedit

8/21/2026 at 3:11:26 PM

And it came from the days of floppy disks, so we often needed the chance to put the correct disk back in the right drive!

by roryirvine

8/21/2026 at 3:20:45 PM

When the game comes on 14 floppy disks, sometimes you forget how to count in the excitement.

by doubled112

8/21/2026 at 3:39:29 PM

Keeping one of the disks from the pile was peak bff/sibling rivalry antics. It's like keeping out one of the pieces of the puzzle so nobody can finish it but you.

by collingreen

8/21/2026 at 3:27:08 PM

As I remember, standard operating procedure was to retry 4 or 5 times, then turn off the computer and walk away in frustration.

by adiabatichottub

8/21/2026 at 3:17:59 PM

Not understanding the aspirin reference.

by tobadzistsini

8/21/2026 at 3:28:59 PM

Aspirin had (though this is increasingly dated) unique cultural currency as a headache medicine for quite a while after it stopped being the overwhelmingly dominant first-line OTC remedy.

by dragonwriter

8/21/2026 at 3:22:08 PM

Pretty sure "causes Aspirin sales to soar" is an attempt at cleverly saying "gives people headaches"

by CPLX

8/21/2026 at 3:33:19 PM

Thanks, I also found this unclear.

by cr3ative

8/21/2026 at 3:20:55 PM

We added a clause in our coding standard to make all booleans reference the positive frame of reference only. This happened after I got fed up with dealing with too many if !(!not_has_missing_field) operators. Just.... make everything positive: if (is_field_present)

by superxpro12

8/21/2026 at 3:47:02 PM

I try to keep to that, but sometimes the flag is turning on a negative feature, disabling that which is the default and will remain so for compatibility reasons.

Sometimes it is worth the effort of going through and changing the logic elsewhere to keep the boolean positive, sometimes that would be too much effort to retest at the time.

Another option I like, when I have a config object interpreting things so I'm reading doing `if (config.IsWhateverThatThingIsEnabled)` then I can just have paired properties to pick from when I want to check IsEnabled or IsDisabled.

I've come across code where there is an overide for an option to disable something and the naming plus the logical not really make you think about what is happening…

    if (!OverrideDisabledOptionToBlockAction) {}

by dspillett

8/21/2026 at 2:36:15 PM

I thought this was going to be about a marketing success example for Aspirin! ... Although, I guess in a roundabout way it was.

by ccvannorman

8/21/2026 at 3:17:59 PM

A program I occasionally use has a "Don't close" button in that dialog. Of course I'm more used to "Don't save", so I often hit it and then am surprised when the program stays open.

by tdeck

8/21/2026 at 2:20:48 PM

(2007)

by flobosg

8/21/2026 at 3:04:48 PM

For a site about usability, I was going to gripe about the tiny font, low contrast, and unresponsive layout until I saw that. It does look more suitable at 1024x768.

by SoftTalker

8/21/2026 at 2:36:23 PM

Good year

by shaftoe444

8/21/2026 at 2:54:48 PM

Every year was better before 2020!

by baxtr

8/21/2026 at 3:00:53 PM

An active "yes/no/cancel" prompt is a paragon of usability compared to the modern standard of constant yes, except for when it fails with a silent no.

by sb057

8/21/2026 at 3:22:14 PM

"Maybe later..."

by SoftTalker

8/21/2026 at 3:38:00 PM

“Maybe later” and variants annoyed me to no end until I realized that the implication is that you’re not making an indelible choice. As with anything, it can be overused, but I personally enjoy not having to think about whether I can change my mind later.

by WalterGR

8/21/2026 at 4:58:33 PM

Except in practice "Maybe later" means "Nag me about this until I relent and accept"

by SoftTalker

8/21/2026 at 3:29:52 PM

Great title. Great topic. The tiny details are all here, including the 4th option (X), the Abort/Retry/Fail link, and they even have RSS! Subscribed.

by 1970-01-01