Comments on West, Donavon West: OK/Cancel Buttons and the Web

I've read some good stuff here. Definitely wor...

2010-11-19T03:50:13.609-05:00

I've read some good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting.
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While the GET/POST reason is right, I think what&#...

2009-10-02T08:57:44.937-04:00

While the GET/POST reason is right, I think what's more important is that users will, most of the time, want to Save/Proceed instead of Cancel it, so it's appropriate to highlight the most common task.

Another thing to note is that the cancel should have a confirmation dialog when possible, as it's a "destructive" task.

Check out this article: http://www.tinyurl.com/26p...

2009-09-29T03:12:28.688-04:00

Check out this article:
http://www.tinyurl.com/26pzcn

Buttons are typically used for POST events, while ...

2009-09-03T21:37:32.861-04:00

Buttons are typically used for POST events, while links are used for GET events. Cancel is a GET to a new page, while the button is a POST that will affect the application state.

and why should it be a link for cancel?

2009-09-03T20:32:27.136-04:00

and why should it be a link for cancel?

This has been dealt with quite extensively by inte...

2009-09-03T17:01:31.701-04:00

This has been dealt with quite extensively by interface design pros...and it's not so much a formula of OK/Cancel or Cancel/OK.
You didn't touch at all on the visual communication of the colors, font weights, placement/alignment with the form fields they serve, etc. If you're really good at "visual communication" then it may not even matter what order you put your buttons in.
You're getting at that somewhat with the "Ok button-cancel link" conclusion, but the real power of some of your examples (namely LinkedIn) come from the contrast of visual weights and,therefore, relative importance of one action compared to the other.

These results are pretty inconclusive, and do not ...

2009-09-03T00:37:08.996-04:00

These results are pretty inconclusive, and do not necessarily show a clear winner. However, the convention of OK/Cancel only seem to have stuck because of the dominance of the Windows platform.

However, in all of your examples from the web, only Linked In seems to have nailed the fact that the 'cancel' action should be made less prominent then the other option(s).