[AdamSpeight2008]

Pro & Cons of MessageBox? Is There Alternatives?



Let's discuss the pros, cons and alternative of MessageBoxes.

Edit: Reattaching Picture

This post has been edited by AdamSpeight2008: 13 October 2011 - 03:43 PM

[modi123_1]

Make your own.

[DimitriV]

I dont really like that you can't use your own:
•icons
•buttons
•layout

And when you're trying to make a professional looking interactive interface, you need this kind of functionality.
I just use DialogBox when I need my own interface.
So, until MessageBox is improved, I will use DialogBox and advise you do the same.
But if you have any suggestions, I'm still listening.

[smohd]

Let me say what I think about message boxes:
Pros:
- They give attention to what has happened, user can no that something should be taken care. User with no experience with application can get their info for errors or mistakes which they made using message box(either build in or custom)
- Easy to react with message box that if message was given somewhere else. So user must react to one of the option

Cons:
- Frighten users, if message box appears every time, non experienced users get frighten by them
- If not well organized, they cause bad design practice...

Alternative: Sometimes we can use labels with different colors to represent important messages or warnings(like mostly in web apps). This reduce number of message boxes to be shown.

Lets get some other ideas.....

This post has been edited by smohd: 11 October 2011 - 01:18 PM

[modi123_1]

Colored status bar messages have always worked well for me in the past.

[cfoley]

Pretty quick and easy to use, both for the programmer and the user. The lack of customisability ensures a consistent UI between applications on the same platform. You can always roll your own but most of the time you won't have to.

[AdamSpeight2008]

Pro: The MessageBox does support Accessibilty Features (Contents will be read aloud.)
You often forget about this when designing custom controls / dialogs.
Pro: Copy content to Clipboard.
Con: Thread Blocking (It synchronous)
Con: Doesn't timeout to a default safe option.
Con: Assumes that there always is a user there to click it. (Eg Server Apps)
Con: Misused for debugging.

This post has been edited by AdamSpeight2008: 11 October 2011 - 02:16 PM

[smohd]

Quote

Pro: Copy content to Clipboard.

Adam, can you explain this? is this a pro or con?

[cfoley]

Quote

Con: Thread Blocking (It synchronous)

Only a con if you don't want it to block the thread. Often it's used when the computer needs user input before it can continue.

[AdamSpeight2008]

smohd, on 11 October 2011 - 10:25 PM, said:

Quote

Pro: Copy content to Clipboard.

Adam, can you explain this? is this a pro or con?

Definitely a Pro: Try Ctrl + C next time you get MessageBox popping up.
Open Notepan
Ctrl + V

Great for tech-support.

[Curtis Rutland]

Quote

Misused for debugging.

This specifically. It's not really a con, per se, because that's more a user error than a drawback to the control itself.

But .NET allows us so many ways to debug, like breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, tracepoints, conditional tracepoints, Debug class, Trace class, Console class, Watch1, Locals, Immediate, etc...

Hell, in C#, we can even do a #if preprocessor directive for logging. I'm sure VB.NET has something similar.

There's so many options, I have to facepalm when I see people just shove a MessageBox.Show to inspect a value. Or worse, a MsgBox.

[AdamSpeight2008]

Curtis Rutland, on 11 October 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

Hell, in C#, we can even do a #if preprocessor directive for logging. I'm sure VB.NET has something similar.

It does, it even uses the same keyword.

[AdamSpeight2008]

cfoley, on 11 October 2011 - 10:42 PM, said:

Quote

Con: Thread Blocking (It synchronous)

Only a con if you don't want it to block the thread. Often it's used when the computer needs user input before it can continue.

But this is often misused, especially on multiple operations?
Why not put the action into a "Come Back To" list? For example the Windows 8 File Copy Dialog

Why can't it (MessageBox) be made asynchronous? You're Await-ing the result DialogResult of the MessageBox.
Example of Coding against Async_MessageBox

Dim reply As Task(Of DialogResult) = Await Async_MessageBox.Show()

[_HAWK_]

I make my own. I just like to keep a theme throughout the project and it gives me more flexibility. I see your point Adam! I like the way you think.

[dawmail333]

AdamSpeight2008, on 12 October 2011 - 08:51 AM, said:

cfoley, on 11 October 2011 - 10:42 PM, said:

Quote

Con: Thread Blocking (It synchronous)

Only a con if you don't want it to block the thread. Often it's used when the computer needs user input before it can continue.

But this is often misused, especially on multiple operations?
Why not put the action into a "Come Back To" list? For example the Windows 8 File Copy Dialog

Why can't it (MessageBox) be made asynchronous? You're Await-ing the result DialogResult of the MessageBox.
Example of Coding against Async_MessageBox

Dim reply As Task(Of DialogResult) = Await Async_MessageBox.Show()

Interesting concept, although I've always thought that if you need an asynchronous result, that you'd need a different UI concept/flow.

However, why don't we, the awesome brains contained here, build a GitHub project to make the Ultimate Messagebox™? Synchronous vs Asynchronous, custom images, selectable messages (for real copying), custom buttons, the works. Sound like a worthy idea?