Do you remember every time you forgot to save something and tried to quit some application, an alertbox popped out abruptly with a loud “bang” saying “you haven’t finished saving, are you sure you want to quit?” This is an excellent error-proof mechanism but in some cases, we can improve it with a subtler alert, making it more usable.

Here is a comparison. In one of our application we have a text submitting form with a character limit of 600. Unlike the traditional “you have reached 600″ alert, I tried to implement in a more user friendly way.

1. Provide a live word count. If exceeded, it will turn into a negative value with red color the color I believe is a good metaphor for “stop”
2. Take of the “600″ alert
3. Disable the “submit” button after user exceed the limit, providing a soft alert
4. While the textarea is blank, show a hint message “this is 600 limit only”

Usable vs unusalbe warning

So, how do you feel about it?

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