UI Question, Should there be one way and only one way to close the form?

Question

When designing a form I have the option of putting a close button at the bottom of the form. The form will also have a close form "x" button in the upper right corner of the window as provided by winforms.

Based on the principle of "There should be one and preferably only one obvious way to do it" I was thinking the close button should be removed because of the forms existing default functionality.

What have the rest of you found in your experience that works best for users or has been the standard for UI setup?

Answer 1

I think that principle applies mostly to coding (and not for every language, think of Perl!), for UI's usually it's good to have different ways to do things... because it allows you to do things faster.

Think about any common operation like cut or paste, you can use the edit menu, the contextual menu, the keyboard shortcut or even the icons in the toolbar. Try to remove any of those ways of doing it in any application and you'll have hordes of users screaming to get it back.

So here the main principle is to not change what the user expects. Another remark: be consistent, though there might be different ways get access to the same functionality, all of them should work in the same way (I'd be very pissed of if copying with the keyboard shortcut did a different thing than copying with the right mouse button XD).

Answer 2

I have done a considerable amount of design work, and I can't say I have heard of the principle of, "There should be one way to do [some task]." In fact, I have heard (almost) the opposite: "There should always be one obvious way to do a task, but additional methods could be used to help different user types." An example of this is the ability to hit the "Save" button to save a document. But, you can also do "File > Save" and you can also hit Ctrl + S. Three ways to do the same task.

Also, if you're programming in a Windows environment (as it appears you are), you will automatically get multiple ways of closing a window. The [X], of course, Alt + F4 is typical, you can setup Ctrl + C, etc. I wouldn't particularly put a close button on the bottom of the form unless it flows with the form's input. For example, if you want to [Submit] or [Close] the form - does that make sense? Would it be better to [Submit] or [Cancel]? Think about what your users are doing and how they are using the form.

Answer 3

Here are some guidelines I follow:

• If the form is an application (it was launched directly from Windows), it should probably not have a close button. Users expect to be able to close the application by clicking the X in the top-right corner.
• If it is a dialog (it was launched from another window within your application) that simply displays information, it should probably have a close button and you can optionally leave the Windows close button as well.
• If it is a dialog that allows the user to edit data it should have a Save or Apply button and a Cancel button but no Windows X. The reason is because it is ambiguous what it means. Should it save the data? Cancel it? Display a dialog asking them what they want to do?

In general I do agree that there should be only one way to do something. The reason is that a reasonable user will have to wonder if they do different things (even if they are named the same). Even if the user discovers they do similar things, they may wonder if they are subtly different.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. For example, most users understand that the file menu, toolbar, and keyboard shortcuts of the same name all point to the same command.