Bad UI
I regularly read a couple of UI related blocks (Greg’s Head and flow|state) and thought I might weight in with my own pet peeve: dialog boxes. I have never seen a single dialog box that I believe was justified. Almost all dialog boxes in UI are the result of a poorly designed interface. An interface developer (or more likely a programmer who is not an interface developer) who did not think through the user experience enough to realize that there is always a better way to inform or prompt the user.
The worst side effect of dialog boxes that that applications launch them with complete disregard for the user’s focus. If I’m not looking at the application’s window, the dialog box is distracting and therefore annoying. I know the application can’t continue until I confirm or deny it’s problem, but it’s a computer program, it can wait.
Firefox is a great example of how simply thinking through the user experience means you can get rid of the dialog box. It used to be that if firefox couldn’t load your webpage it would flash a dialog box. If you sit and stare at the blank screen while the page tries to load then it doesn’t really matter. But if you load a couple pages then go e-mail and come back to them, it can get bothersome. As of version 1.5, they’ve replaced the dialog box with a simple webpage that says that the website you were looking for cannot be found. I shouldn’t give the firefox team all the credit, Microsoft has been doing this with Internet Explorer for at least the past two versions.
So, if you’re a developer and you write applications that have a user interface, please, grep -i your code for “dialog”, put yourself in your user’s shoes and figure out a simple way to inform them. Your users will be much appreciative.