[thelist] Another submit button for cancel

M. Seyon evoltlist at delime.com
Wed Dec 15 17:06:32 CST 2004


Message from Bird, Graham (12/15/2004 05:55 AM)
>Hi,
>
>I have a form on which I want to provide a Cancel button.
>
>My current idea is to have a second submit button (valid under W3C specs)...
>and send the user back to the page they came from if the submit value =
>"Cancel".

Given a couple things:
1. Normally, the "opposite" button to "SUBMIT" clears the form, rather than 
sending the user back to the previous page. (I'm talking about the CLEAR 
button, which is usually the option presented alongside SUBMIT on most web 
forms.)
2. Standard Windows OK/Cancel dialogue boxes usually work more as "OK" = do 
task, "Cancel" = do nothing. There's a separate Undo (go back) function.

Will users understand what you're trying to do or will they attempt to use 
it as a clear function every time they make an error, thereby becoming 
confused when an unexpected behaviour occurs (they get transported to the 
previous page), and possibly even frustrated if it keeps occurring.

FWIW, calculators have Clear and Cancel buttons. C and CE. My bank's ATM 
also has CLEAR and CANCEL buttons. To be quite honest, in both these cases, 
I'm not too sure which does which. When I make a mistake, I tend to choose 
one at random and hope for the best.

Heck, I don't even know which means which. CE? Clear? Cancel? Both words 
contain those letters, and neither word begins with the letters "CE". *sigh*

I think the problem is the two words are too similar, visually as well as 
in meaning. Do you want to clear... the entire transaction, or just clear 
the last thing you did? Or do you want to cancel everything, or just cancel 
the last button you pressed? See, it works either way.

Of course maybe I'm just obtuse...

regards.
-marc

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