Re: Prompt as ask

["Sharon Burton-Hardin" <sharonburton -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

I use prompt in the following situations:
Click the Delete button. At the prompt, click Yes. The Sara Dog appears on
your screen.
Insert the disc into the drive. At the prompt, click OK to start installing
the Sara Dog product.
After you click Go, all instances of Sara Dog are found and removed from
your database. If you selected Warn in step 2, you are prompted before the
records are permanently removed from the database.

The prompt is a small part of the step and the task flow stays clear. You
are also not being asked. The product is not sentient - really, it isn't,
appearances to the contrary - so I avoid the word ask or anything liek it. I
encourage my students to avoid it as well.

If your users have never seen that sentence construction before, I have
found that they seem to get it very quickly. Of course, we are in usability
testing for a project right now and I wish we had thought to test that to
see. Too late to change the test now!

sharon

Sharon Burton-Hardin
President of the Inland Empire chapter of the STC
www.iestc.org
Anthrobytes Consulting
www.anthrobytes.com
Check out www.WinHelp.net!
See www.sharonburton.com!

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Cort <jcort -at- totaltel -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Monday, 13 September, 1999 11:12 AM
Subject: Prompt as ask



| Have you ever used "prompt" as a synonym for "ask"?
|
| Like so:
|
| <A "yes" answer allows the system to find any new or invalid wuddleblups
and
| prompt the user whether the new wuddleblups should be added and the
invalid
| ones deleted.>
|