Editing Modal window (section)

=== Unexpected interruptions ===

Unexpected [[Alert dialog box|alert dialogs]] are particular culprits of [[mode error]]s<ref name="undo"/> with potentially severe consequences. Usability practitioners prescribe that dangerous actions should be undoable wherever possible; an alert box that appears unexpectedly or is dismissed by [[habituation]] doesn't protect from the dangerous action.<ref>{{cite book |last=Raskin |first=Jef |title=The Humane Interface |publisher=Addison Wesley |date=2000 |isbn=0-201-37937-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask }}</ref> A modeless [[infobar]] is increasingly seen as preferable to a dialog box because it does not interrupt the user's activities, but rather allows the user to read extra information in their own time.

One proposed approach is to design every input element as a self-contained, [[Task analysis|task-oriented]] interaction, guided by its own specific requirements rather than by the global state of the entire application. For example, required elements might be preceded with an [[asterisk]], elements with invalid data might acquire a red border, and so on. With this approach, users actually benefit from seeing many input elements at once — they can enter data in a way that makes sense to them, instead of having all the other unrelated elements blocked until a predefined data-entry sequence is completed.