[sylpheed:37200] Button order in modal dialogs

[Anton Shepelev]

Hello, all. The following Usenet article may be of interest to Sylpheed
users and developers:

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Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2023 21:27:14 -0500
From: bad sector <forgetski at INVALID.net>
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux
Subject: about button order


I started asking myself why do I keep hitting the NO instead of the YES 
button when trying to empty the trash in Sylpheed seeing that emptying 
it was the very reason why I had right clicked the Trash folder in the 
first place. It threw me for a loop (other dialogs might use CANCEL and 
OK buttons) and I wanted to know why. In this case the buttons are on 
the right side of the dialog with the NO button next to the right edge 
and the YES button inboard from it i.e. the decisional progression of 
buttons is perpendicularly adjacent to the right edge and this attribute 
may have more to do with response than the direction that a user 
normally reads in.

Seems to me that my attention first goes to the dialog body but then 
attacks it from the side where the progression of buttons is 
perpendicular to it. Try it, see what you think. I haven't tried with 
buttons that completely fill the dialog in one direction or another, 
there might be more to learn...

Methinks that in a line of buttons with a decisional progresion 
perpendicularly adjacent to the dialog edge where the buttons are, the 
button most likely to be clicked should be the one that is closest to 
that edge. Also, if a person calls for the dialog then the least-likely 
button to be clicked is the CANCEL or NO button, and it should be farthest.