This will be the first of three posts I’ll make on “interacting with users”, or more specifically message and error boxes! Here’s the outline:

1. The current state of play
2. There’s a problem?… If it aint broke?
3. Suggestions for Improvements

So let’s get started then!

Windows 3.x

Windows 95

Windows NT

Windows XP

Windows Vista

For a while now I’ve had the feeling that message boxes, input boxes and error messages are just “broken”. Modern software such as Visual Studio has made some improvements in this type of messaging with extended descriptions of errors and suggestions for fixes but there are still short comings.

One of the problems a platform like Windows faces is that it has to support the design of all message box code from it’s APIs. Code that calls this API is limited to the original design of the API. Excel is an example of a programme that does this.

And so to the specific case of Excel. Right out of the box there are issues with the message box function, mainly its modal nature. This can be over come by using the Windows API directly yourself, as described here.

But this isn’t at the core of the broken-ness and we will take a look at these in my next post!