where to place cancel button on form

Question

Hi all

Does anyone know the correct place of the cancel button in a form? Does it have to be on the left of the submit button or on the right?

Answer 1

What do you like more? A PC or a Mac?

Answer 2

Most people read left to right, so it's normal to have OK on the left. At least, this is the Windows convention. OS X does it the other way around, I think.

Answer 3

This article by Jeff may be of interest http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fitts-law.html

It's not specific to the Cancel button but still a good read.

Answer 4

Jakob Nielsen is widely considered an expert on usability and user interface design. He gives his opinion in this article: "OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?".

The summary of his answer is: It's actually not an important UI issue, but if you are designing for Windows, put OK first; on Mac, put OK last; on the web, put OK first unless the majority of your users are not using Windows (but see also this article on Reset and Cancel Buttons for the web).