Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but since it does tie in with software development, I think it is makes sense. I am sick and tired of programs confirming that you want to close them when it doesn't make sense. There are some times when it does; Firefox and other tabbed browsers are one of those cases. Sometimes, even after using Firefox for years, I will go to close a window that I may have thought for some reason was a pop-up, but it actually has other tabs I want to keep. In other cases, though, such as a simple application, it makes no sense. Of course I am sure I want to exit, or else I would not have just clicked to close it! At least be a bit smarter about it. For example, if you are designing an application that plays video files and you want to confirm when someone clicks to close it, don't ask the user if they are sure if they don't have a file loaded! I don't know. This just annoyed me a few minutes ago because I had about 3 programs in a row that confirmed to close when they really shouldn't have.

At the very least, give us an option to turn off the prompts.

But I agree. Only really prompt me if something bad is going to happen or its not obvious that I made a conscious decision to exit.

I've pressed the 'close' button in Guild Wars instead of the maximise on several occasions. I wished they add a confirm popup!

Used to have a cheepy wireless mouse at work, and when the battery got low, it would rapid fire mouse button clicks...real frustraiting. Would be doing something, then pull up google to research, click to close that...and it also sends the 'clicked here' message to window behind it in the background...Of course there would be no warning when the mouse batteries got that low, you would just attempt to close one application and suddenly the app behind it would try to close as well. ACK!

Well since this is a thread on rants WRT window shutting
I hate how in msvc2005 when u use middle mouse button to close a tab + u click on its just off the border or elsewhere in the title bar, it shuts the current window youre working on! hapens to me at least once a day

doh, talk about a retarded design issue :)
it should just ignore the click as the user hasnt clicked on anything

This is something that has annoyed me in the past as well. In the current application I am working on (Todo 4.0), I'm thinking of including an option called "Nanny Mode'. When enabled, it does a lot more prompting (eg: "Are you sure you want to close the app?", "Are you sure you want to delete that task?"). When disabled, it disables a bunch of the prompts.

do that, and add a tickbox in thepopup to disable the popup permanently (with an option reset nanny mode back to default).

Blender.

If it hasn't evolved since Christmas 2007 when I last used it, then Blender is a stroke of true genius. Not only did it not offer you a confirmation on quit, it didn't even ask you if you wanted to save any unfinished work if you hadn't already saved it.

That is worthy of some kind of award. The concept is just pure brilliance and I'll bet the big boys are kicking themselves wishing they'd thought of that truly fantastic, awe-inspiring new approach to HCI and usability.

(In all seriousness, it is a very serious and easily fixed flaw yet it was seemingly never done, despite floods of support tickets requesting it)

Quote: Original post by oliii
I've pressed the 'close' button in Guild Wars instead of the maximise on several occasions. I wished they add a confirm popup!

I have actually done that myself. If I remember right, they have non-standard minimize and maximize buttons.

There are definitely reasons to confirm on exit. Online games should probably always confirm on exit if they are not at the menu screen, since people will usually log out before simply closing the program.

There are other programs as well that should have confirm on exit. At best, the programs could be smarter, and simple state-checks in the application could give huge clues whether or not the person is really wanting to close the application, like the example I gave above of the video player that does not have a video open.

A whole different argument, which some posters here mentioned, are programs that should have a confirm on exit, but don't. Almost any program where it is likely that users can sit down for hours and work on something should likely confirm on exit if something is not saved. I think that is mostly pretty standard now. It is also pretty new for applications to ask people if they want to save the customization to the workspace in an application. Normally, if you changed icon locations, menu bars, display, etc., you could just close the program by mistake without saving it. In extreme cases, this could make you lose an hour or more of work. Luckily, that seems to be turning into the norm for a confirmation on that too.

I agree that confirm on exit can be annoying, but if it helps to prevent you from losing your work even one time, the little annoyances are worth it, imo.

What I think it more troubling are the inconsistencies in the various system info popups. Sometimes "no" means continue, at other times "yes" means continue and vice versa. For example, last week Microsoft published a huge security update. My brother promptly used it to update my father's computer. The next day my father went to surf the net only to get a security warning alerting him to the fact that the IE executable file had changed and asking him if he wanted to use it anyway. He selected "no" because in the past he had selected "yes" to a similar prompt (such prompts are all similar to a 70 year old man) and ended up breaking something (I wasn't there I don't know what broke). Anyway, he selected "no" and IE shutdown and he couldn't surf and didn't know why and so he was frustrated. He called me and told me what was going on, so I told him to select "yes" the next time the prompt appeared because the change to the IE executable was intentional and part of the security update. The immediate problem was solved, but the underlying problem remains.