And i’ll tell you why that’s so frustrating: once a modal alert pops in you cant do anything else, you cannot use any of the browser’s functions, cant see on another tab what the terms on the alert are meaning, can’t go back either. This is worse when the message is not clear and you have to confirm something with “OK” and “CANCEL”. “Ok what? Cancel what? Is this gonna ruin the work i’ve done so far if i get it wrong?”. Not funny.

I’m a little bit of a hypocrite. I use javascript confirmation when deleting something. You would think that’s a good thing but it’s not, try to delete 10 things one by one and you’ll know what i mean.

Solutions:
- instead of alerts use inline messages (see the yellow bg ones on Gmail) are the most elegant and usable solution to a problem i have ever seen, non intrusive, space saving, time saving. If the messages disappears after a while it’s perfect.

- Instead confirming a delete let the user delete stuff and provide a “UNDO” option. (It’s said that the undo functionality is the greatest way to let user explore, fuckup, recover, the best way to change the user from beginner to intermediate). Of course, this is no easy job for a developer. Providing such a feature is a real pain in the ass, that’s why you don’t see it on many web applications, that’s why i break the usability rules and ask users for confirmation when deleting.