Comment On Poor Bananas

I had null bananas today too.


Note from Alex: For a little while, the content of the article simply read "null"; note to self... always preview the article after saving it!

void?

Yeah, sucks when that happens

Captcha: nulla (how interestingly fitting)

all your base are belong to us?

NaN Bananas?

Will this page feature in the next Error'd?

So... Is this a TDWTF WTF or is there some joke I'm not getting.

Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas today!

Can't wait to see the write up on this one. A WTF while posting a WTF maybe? Would that make it a meta-WTF?

Secret Agent Man:

So... Is this a TDWTF WTF or is there some joke I'm not getting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_We_Have_No_Bananas

null comment

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Maybe it's has something to do with Adams' Last Theorem.

Ken:

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http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/images/2008/07/10/translateservererror.jpg

Pink Car Care Kit

Jump start your car with the pink toolbox's mobile partner for life.

Kit comprises 2 way multi torch with amber flashing lamp and emergency break out hammer in one, emergency mobile phone charger, jump leads, note pad and pencil, ice scraper, disposable hygienic gloves, car tax disc holder, air fresher and soft case.

Size (H)12.5, (W)32.4, (D)17.7cm.

Requires 2 x AA and 4 x AAA batteries (not included).

Suitable for ages 16 years and over.

Pink Car Care Kit

Jump start your car with the pink toolbox's mobile partner for life.

Kit comprises 2 way multi torch with amber flashing lamp and emergency break out hammer in one, emergency mobile phone charger, jump leads, note pad and pencil, ice scraper, disposable hygienic gloves, car tax disc holder, air fresher and soft case.

Size (H)12.5, (W)32.4, (D)17.7cm.

Requires 2 x AA and 4 x AAA batteries (not included).

Suitable for ages 16 years and over.

The Novell Groupwise one isn't much of a WTF.

Assuming a "busy search" queries people's calendars to see whether they're busy at the proposed time, "Do you want to perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling" is a perfectly reasonable question.

You're moving a meeting. Do you want check that all of the attendees are still available at the new time you've specified, and do you want to edit the body text of the revised meeting request?

Yes: I'll check availabilities and/or put a note into the new meeting request apologising for having to reschedule.

No: Go ahead and reschedule for the new time

Cancel: Forget it, leave the meeting where it is.

SteveB:

Assuming a "busy search" queries people's calendars to see whether they're busy at the proposed time, "Do you want to perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling" is a perfectly reasonable question.

I suppose so, as long as you read it that way. I read it as an XOR between "do busy search" and "edit item before rescheduling".

It's a WTF because the language used isn't clear and the buttons don't correspond to the question.

Did anyone get a screen shot of the "null" message, so that they can submit it to Error'd ? :-)

Vicky:

Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas today!

Are you thinking what I'm thinking B2?

I think I am, B1!

Sa:

Can't wait to see the write up on this one. A WTF while posting a WTF maybe? Would that make it a meta-WTF?

(WTF)²

C'mon everyone, its Beat Up On Alex Day! I feel comfortable gloating, because I never make misteaks.

SteveB:

Assuming a "busy search" queries people's calendars to see whether they're busy at the proposed time, "Do you want to perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling" is a perfectly reasonable question.

I read it as
"Do you want to ((a) perform a busy search) or ((b) edit the item before rescheduling)?" Yes/No/Cancel

If it was meant to be read as :
"Do you want to (perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling)?" then it needed clarifying IMO.

I suppose you could say that the WTF is that,although the second meaning is the only one which makes sense with the available choices, we're all so used to this being done incorrectly, that we assumed the first meaning in the absence of other information.

Bananarama:

C'mon everyone, its Beat Up On Alex Day! I feel comfortable gloating, because I never make misteaks.

I have to ask: was the missing apostrophe intentional? I bet it wasn't.

SteveB:

The Novell Groupwise one isn't much of a WTF.

Assuming a "busy search" queries people's calendars to see whether they're busy at the proposed time, "Do you want to perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling" is a perfectly reasonable question.

You're moving a meeting. Do you want check that all of the attendees are still available at the new time you've specified, and do you want to edit the body text of the revised meeting request?

Yes: I'll check availabilities and/or put a note into the new meeting request apologising for having to reschedule.

No: Go ahead and reschedule for the new time

Cancel: Forget it, leave the meeting where it is.

It's poor UI design, because you are asked two questions simultaneously while only being given Yes/No as an answer. If the intent is to offer two choices, the buttons should be labelled "Search", "Edit" and "Cancel" (Cancel meaning you don't want to do either).

John:

Vicky:

Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas today!

Are you thinking what I'm thinking B2?

I think I am, B1!

I think so, Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?

TRWTF is that Christoph believes the magical file fairy will convert a BMP to PNG if you change the extension.

SteveB:

Assuming [...], "Do you want to perform a busy search or edit the item before rescheduling" is a perfectly reasonable question.

With all due respect, I suggest you move to a career in lawn-mowing, because interface design is clearly not your forte. It is not a reasonable question, and the offered choices are much worse.

Even given your assumption, the question should have been phrased "Do you want to do something before rescheduling, such as a busy search or edit the item?", leaving "Yes/No/Cancel" as sensible choices, albeit with an extra level of prompting if they click YES since the application would then have to find out what action they want to perform.

But the combination of the poorly phrased question and the buttons which completely fail to match the question's possibilities is indeed a WTF, one seen all too often. WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

We used GW for years and never once had a person confused by the busy search question. It seems pretty clear to me, and appears that most people understand it without issue, which, all said, is not a simple task.

Anonymous:

TRWTF is that Christoph believes the magical file fairy will convert a BMP to PNG if you change the extension.

Damn, you beat me to it. Unfortunately BMP's still show up on various sites. It's always a dead give away when an image loads bottom-up. And given their almost non-existent compression (RLE) your usually have a long time to watch them load.

Using a real PNG (and optimising) results in a 17K file. Versus a 702K Windows bitmap. Epic fail.

John:

Are you thinking what I'm thinking B2?

I think I am, B1!

You think you're funny but you . . . okay, that _is_ funny (if you get the reference) but Grrrrrrrrr I had successfully blocked that show from my mind after having to watch it with my daughter for so very, very long. Thank you *so* much.

Yes, we have (null) bananas.

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

Under Windows, doing the former is one call to MessageBox(), while doing the latter requires rolling your own prompt, as you only get to choose from a few stock button sets (OK, Yes/No/Cancel, OK/Cancel, etc). Under Linux, many programs do have Save/Don't Save/Cancel.

lolwtf:

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

Under Windows, doing the former is one call to MessageBox(), while doing the latter requires rolling your own prompt, as you only get to choose from a few stock button sets (OK, Yes/No/Cancel, OK/Cancel, etc). Under Linux, many programs do have Save/Don't Save/Cancel.

I've got a Windows graphics app (MGI PhotoSuite from about 10 years ago, came free with the PC) where they appear to have done just that. The save-on-exit dialog has [Save] [Abandon] [Cancel] buttons.

Trouble is, they must have coded it to accept the button labels within the prompt text, i.e. something like
callOurPrompt("Do you want to save changes to " + filename + "? [Save][Abandon][Cancel]").

How can I tell this? Try editing a file called something like "foobar[1].jpg". On exiting without save, you are greeted with:

Do you want to save changes to foobar
[1]

The "1" button does Save. You can click X to cancel, but there's no way to Abandon.

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

That's better, but still a bit vague. I propose the following button texts:

[Save my changes and exit the program]
[Discard my changes and exit the program]
[Look, just forget I did anything. Take me back to where I was before I clicked on the "Exit" button, okay?]

dpm:

But the combination of the poorly phrased question and the buttons which completely fail to match the question's possibilities is indeed a WTF, one seen all too often. WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

The answer to your question is most likely "Because MessageBox doesn't let you use arbitrary button text, writing a full-fledged dialog is more work."

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
Banana phone!

Please insert a disk into the (null)

sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /dev/null

Problem solved!

Cl(null)ic!

TRWTF is that the GroupWise thing is a repeat.

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

i really hope you are joking, otherwise you must be damn retarded. i think its harder NOT to understand [YES] [NO] [CANCEL] than doing it. ok, why we don't just put whole stories into the button text, so even the dumbest idiot will understand it?

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

Because the Windows UI guidelines (as oft-ignored as they are) would have you believe that's the right way.

As opposed to this:

"No Text Found For This Product"?
"No Product Found For This Text"!

TRWTF is that someone out there is deemed intelligent enough to write some sort of commercially available application, but too stupid to know the difference between 'then' and 'than'. Although that could explain why the application can't count.

Sean:

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

Because the Windows UI guidelines (as oft-ignored as they are) would have you believe that's the right way.

As opposed to this:

There's another little UI gem in that OS X screenshot. The "Don't Save" and "Save" boxes are physically far apart, thus making it harder to accidentally click the wrong choice. With "Cancel" in between, mis-clicking it would just return you back to the app.

If "Save" and "Don't Save" were beside each other, it'll be much easier to accidentally click the wrong option.

Never noticed it before...

Code Dependent:

dpm:

WhyTF do programmers offer users this:

Do you want to save the file before quitting?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]

instead of labelling the buttons directly with the action

[SAVE THEN QUIT] [JUST QUIT] [CANCEL]

It's ridiculous to add the extra level of verbosity.

That's better, but still a bit vague. I propose the following button texts:

[Save my changes and exit the program]
[Discard my changes and exit the program]
[Look, just forget I did anything. Take me back to where I was before I clicked on the "Exit" button, okay?]

Nice idea - that also gives us an excuse to have *huge* monitors :)