Should the cancel button ask for confirmation?

Question

If the user clicks the Cancel button, should he open a dialog with a confirmation message?

If so, should it be all the time or only when there are unsaved changes in the form?

Answer 1

If undoing erases the data or device, yes. For example, canceling a device in the middle of a firmware update.

If the action takes a long time, and a random cancellation will require a start, yes.

For example, I don’t see a popup here when StackOverflow is annoying, when I decide to close a tab, and not create an edit that I started on one of my questions.

Answer 2

Not if it is not very important / potentially dangerous. The presence of pop-ups accompanied by pop-ups is annoying.

Answer 3

"Cancel" means to abandon the action before it begins. If the action has already begun, the command should be named “Stop” instead. This allows the user to understand that a button may interrupt something in the middle of a stream.

The action of a real Cancel does not need confirmation, since it does not cause any problems. The action "Stop" can, but only if stopping the partial path can leave things in a disordered state. (And in this case, you should think about finding a way to stop all changes already made so that the state returns to what it was before the action began. This is not always possible, of course, as if you delete files.)

Answer 4

Make action easy to dispense with confirmation (don't annoy your users!). But also facilitate cancellation. Read Alan Cooper About Face for many good user interface tips.

Answer 5

It really depends on the situation.

Video encoding, for example, a process that can take hours, must have confirmation, only because you can accidentally press the button 99%.

The initialization process of the installer or other application, on the other hand, does not need to be confirmed, since it can usually be restarted quickly enough and will not take much time.

If the Cancel button starts a process that could potentially take a lot of time (say, he needs to undo the changes), the user should be informed about this, possibly with a pop-up window, but there may be enough text next to the button.

The general rule is to minimize confirmation dialogs if, for example, it can be replaced with the Undo action. I do not think this applies to most Cancel buttons.

Answer 6

Use the following algorithm to determine the answer to your question:

if (1-p)*w > p*a then ask for confirmation 

Where

• p - the probability that the user really wanted to cancel (0.7 or so)
• w - the amount of lost (working) time due to unintentional cancellation
• a is the time lost due to anonymous confirmation (5 seconds or so).

Of course, you must evaluate p, w, and a. Using my default values, you should ask for confirmation when an unintentional cancellation will cost the user more than 10.5 seconds. Thus, in the case of a long-term operation, for example, encoding a video, you should not ask if the user is canceled within 10 seconds after starting this task. When entering data, do not ask if the form is completely empty, but ask if the user has already entered the data.

Answer 7

Basically, if canceling a cancellation is difficult, time consuming or impossible, you should ask the user. This usually happens when the user has performed some actions that they may wish to save (for example, writing a blog post and closing the tab, updating the firmware on the hardware device, starting system updates, installing large parts of the software), and not just deleting the current state. In the end, sometimes the cancel button can be accidentally pressed. You just need to use common sense to determine if it will be a really bad experience for the user if the operation was accidentally canceled (which would cause a cancellation request) or they could easily restart any operation that was accidentally canceled without much loss. The strategy that I use to solve such problems is to introduce myself into the user's shoes, that is, introduce myself as a user of this program. How would I feel if I accidentally clicked on cancel? If this mentality is grim, add a hint in case.

Answer 8

It would be better not to request, but to facilitate the cancellation of the cancellation, if possible. GMail does it well. You click "Delete", it deletes, but you get the link at the top to say "Cancel removal".

Answer 9

I think the answer is in terms of data.

If the user has made changes to the data, not to mention clicking somewhere on the interface, the user should be asked to confirm the exit. But if no changes have occurred, there is no reason to confirm. Because confirmation is an attempt for the user.