

How to Make Sure Users Don’t Accidentally Delete - waterhole
http://uxmovement.com/buttons/how-to-make-sure-users-dont-accidentally-delete/

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dsego
Github has this, but better. Instead of just typing delete, you type in the
name of the repo you want deleted. As a UX pattern, however, this should be
avoided if possible.

Aza wrote about this way back in 2007:
[http://alistapart.com/article/neveruseawarning](http://alistapart.com/article/neveruseawarning)

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petervandijck
"type DELETE" is a big improvement on the old alerts that Aza wrote about. I
think it actually fixes the problem.

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damiangostomski
The more common it is to delete something as part of a regular workflow, the
less attention you pay when you do it, and no number of confirmation dialogs
will resolve that.

99% of the time when I want to delete something, it's intentional instead of
accidental, so why should have I have to confirm the action 99% of the time,
to _potentially_ save me 1% of the time.

Allowing the user to undo is a much better solution, as even if you confirm
something, it's only after deleting it you realise you selected the wrong list
to delete, or though you where on the development server instead of
production. And there's no reason this should only apply to destructive
actions such as deleting something. GMail let's you undo sending an email (or
more specifically, it delays sending the email for a few seconds to give you a
chance to realise you sent it to the wrong person, forgot an attachment or
realise you're drunk emailing).

I aware that there's additional work involved in developing something to allow
you to undo, as well as added overhead, such as how long do you store
"deleted" files, how do you undo an action which has since had other actions
performed on it etc.

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radley
This kind of problem was solved almost two decades ago:

1 - use the correct dialog button layout: cancel on the left, confirm on the
right. always.

2 - default to the cancel button - highlight / color it & attach to the enter
key

3\. show an alert icon - something obvious, don't just show plain text

4\. if it's really serious, allow undo / history

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CharlesW
Better: Allow undo/history even if it's unserious.

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erik14th
Is there any reason that concept is so rarely used in the web? Well, there's
usually an undo functionality in desktop-like web apps but most CRUD lack that
kind of feature.

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danellis
Because people don't know they want it, so it's easy to not bother
implementing it knowing no one will ask for it.

