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When I want to go look at a specific tag in my "interesting tags", its very easy for me to "misclick" and hit the delete "X" on accident. Its very annoying because I have no feedback as to what I deleted. I have to look over the tags and try and guess what's not there. I feel kind of dumb complaining about it, but alas, it has become rather annoying.

It would be nice if a little info bar linky thingy (highly technical term) under the interesting tags told you "You deleted php click to undo". This is synonomous with what happens when you delete in gmail. You can easily hit "undo" if you deleted unintentionally, and it avoids a stupid confirmation window "Do you REALLLY TRULY want to delete php".

I'll add that although it seems trivial, its the most annoying usability problems I have with the site. I bookmark a good number of "interesting tags", and then I can very easily mistakenly lose one, and I can't figure out what's not there without spending at least a few minutes scanning my interesting tags. This is a significant distraction from my usage of the site.

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  • 3
    Maybe you want to look at this: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1125/…
    – Ladybug Killer
    Nov 13, 2009 at 13:58
  • yeah I guess kind of related
    – Doug T.
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:32
  • are you using a laptop? i do things like this on my laptop sometimes, when the touch pad interprets a movement as a tap (click). it gets annoying. it also makes cascading menus a huge pain sometimes.
    – Kip
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:45
  • actually yes for a long time I was using a laptop, and it was a royal annoyance then. Its still annoying though with a mouse and I miss by a couple of pixels, causing the tag to delete.
    – Doug T.
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:57
  • also related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29350/…
    – Doug T.
    Nov 13, 2009 at 16:38

1 Answer 1

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There's a good article on A List Apart about this web UI consideration.

This leads to one of the most basic and important mantras of interface design: Never use a warning when you mean undo.

Google Mail is a outstanding example of this mantra. When you delete an e-mail, it immediately gives you an option to undo that action. How humane! This neatly sidesteps the issue of warnings (as well as the visibility issue of undo). When we make a mistake (which we are bound to do) it isn’t very costly because we can just undo it. With undo, we spend less time worrying and more time doing work.

From: A List Apart: Articles: Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo

Edit: Now that I tried it out, I see that SO does neither the elegant solution (undo) nor the inelegant solution (confirmation dialog). It just deletes the tag the moment you click the button.

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  • +1 I've always liked that feature of gmail.
    – Graeme Perrow
    Nov 13, 2009 at 14:49
  • 1
    +1, that GMail feature has saved me many a time.
    – Heather M
    Nov 13, 2009 at 16:01
  • i've suggested to the gmail team that they give us a brief window (30 seconds?) after sending something to undo the send... but so far no one there seems to have liked the idea... send them the suggestion if you think it's a good idea!
    – Kip
    Nov 13, 2009 at 19:10
  • @Kip: Google labs has a feature called "Undo send" that does exactly that. Don't know how long the delay is.
    – Graeme Perrow
    Nov 20, 2009 at 15:54
  • @Graeme Perrow: thanks! i had no idea about google labs... lots of good gmail tweaks there!
    – Kip
    Nov 20, 2009 at 16:51

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