Question My OK button is a little too much to the right
- Thread starter 357mag
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Skydiver
Staff member
Not without using a custom dialog box. The system message box is supposed to be a quick and easy Windows UI guidelines compliant dialog box that handles the 80% case of showing a message with the most common icons and buttons. It's not meant to be infinitely customizable.
This is not a C# General question. It is specifically a Windows Forms question. Please post in the most specific forum applicable to the topic. Thread moved.
The dialogue will be automatically sized to the text it displays. If you wanted to get really dodgy then you may be able to add some leading and/or trailing whitespace to your short text, but I'm not even sure that it won't be automatically trimmed. It's about 5-10 minutes work to create your own form for this though, so it's not an onerous task.
cjard
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Or, because there are bigger problems to solve, you just let it go; it's a fact that users will ignore anything you write into a messagebox anyway.
Use them sparingly; users can't read and even if they could, they wouldn't want to.
Developers are forever seeking ways to put more and more text and info and notifications into programs because detail and information is what they like; this is the exact opposite of what regular users want. Users hate computers and want the least friction way of getting their tasks done with them as possible. Throwing more blockers in their way and things that drag their focus away from what they're trying to achieve, to perform some trivial task (like disabling the whole program until they click OK on a messagebox), just makes them hate computers even more
(To give an example for this particular context; the windows calculator does not use a messagebox to show you the answer, nor does your phone, nor any pocket calculator you ever used. Any time you want to use a message box your first thought should be "how can I design things so that I don't use a message box?")
Use them sparingly; users can't read and even if they could, they wouldn't want to.
Developers are forever seeking ways to put more and more text and info and notifications into programs because detail and information is what they like; this is the exact opposite of what regular users want. Users hate computers and want the least friction way of getting their tasks done with them as possible. Throwing more blockers in their way and things that drag their focus away from what they're trying to achieve, to perform some trivial task (like disabling the whole program until they click OK on a messagebox), just makes them hate computers even more
(To give an example for this particular context; the windows calculator does not use a messagebox to show you the answer, nor does your phone, nor any pocket calculator you ever used. Any time you want to use a message box your first thought should be "how can I design things so that I don't use a message box?")
Skydiver
Staff member
It takes some time to get from the console UI mentality over into a GUI mentality. It also takes practice, and observation. Try things out, but also see what others have done.
