CHAPTER 2
Container Views
Auxiliary Views 2-19
dangerous situation. For example, a confirmation alert appears before
Newton restores anything from the backup on a storage card.
A confirmation alert has no Close box. Instead, it has labeled buttons, usually
one named OK and another named Cancel. The user taps OK to continue the
far-reaching or potentially hazardous action or taps Cancel to cancel the
action and do something else. Figure 2-18 shows a confirmation alert with
OK and Cancel buttons.
Figure 2-18 A confirmation alert tells the user about a grave situation
Take care to phrase the confirmation message so that it makes sense with either
the Cancel button or the OK button. For instance, the message “You’ve
modified one or more items. Do you really want to cancel?” is not as clear as
“Disregard all changes? (can’t undo)”
Instead of an OK button, you can use a button whose label describes the
result of accepting the message in the confirmation alert. For example, in a
confirmation alert that warns about the consequences of restoring from a
card, you could have a button named Restore instead of OK. Likewise, you
could replace the Cancel button with one that more precisely describes the
action, such as Don’t Restore.
Confirmation alerts are modal. While a confirmation alert is displayed, the
system restricts users to interacting primarily with that confirmation alert.
The system ignores all taps outside a confirmation alert. (A user can write
outside a confirmation alert, however.)