Where does the delete control go in my Cocoa user interface?
- by Graham Lee
Hi, I have a Cocoa application managing a collection of objects. The collection is presented in an NSCollectionView, with a "new object" button nearby so users can add to the collection. Of course, I know that having a "delete object" button next to that button would be dangerous, because people might accidentally knock it when they mean to create something. I don't like having "are you sure you want to..." dialogues, so I dispensed with the "delete object". There's a menu item under Edit for removing an object, and you can hit Cmd-backspace to do the same. The app supports undoing delete actions.
Now I'm getting support emails ranging from "does it have to be so hard to delete things" to "why can't I delete objects?". That suggests I've made it a bit too hard, so what's the happy middle ground? I see applications from Apple that do it my way, or with the add/remove buttons next to each other, but I hate that latter option. Is there another good (and preferably common) convention for delete controls? I thought about an action menu but I don't think I have any other actions that would go in it, rendering the menu a bit thin.
