Usability issues with S/MIME plugin

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 12:56:11AM +0200, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> The first one says "Please verify..." and offers the choices [Yes] and 
> [No]. Huh? What does [Yes] mean? What does [No] mean?

This has been partly fixed in CVS, gnupg HEAD has:
  if (asprintf (&desc,
                "Please verify that the certificate identified as:%%0A"
                "  \"%s\"%%0A"
                "has the fingerprint:%%0A"
                "  %s", name, fpr) < 0 )
    return out_of_core ();
  rc = agent_get_confirmation (ctrl, desc, "Correct", "No");

So yeah, the No can be clarified.
 
> The second asks "Do you ultimately trust..." and offers [Yes] and [No]. 
> There should definitely be a [Cancel] or [Ask again later] button.

Either you do trust or you don't.  If you do trust, you select Yes.  If you
don't, you select No.  If you say No, the operation is canceled.

I don't know why there are two questions and not only one that combines
both.  I guess it is because both questions are important, and having them
in one can be confusing - some users might miss one aspect of the two if not
reading carefully.  I am only guessing.

> BTW, the KDE style guides recommend to avoid "Yes" and "No". Instead the 
> button labels should tell what the buttons do. In case of the second 
> dialog they should probably read "Trust" and "Don't trust".

The questions come from gpg-agent, and is the same for all front ends.
However, certainly the button labels should make sense.  The "No" in the
"Please verify..." certainly does not make sense.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/