143415 - Maybe "delete attachment" in the context menu should be "remove"?

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Hakon]

Closely related to bug 142966 ...
When you're composing an outgoing message, and you have attached a file, if you
wan't to withdraw that file, the attachment context menu says "delete".
That is in my opinion a little ambiguous, it makes you wonder whether choosing
this option would delete the file from it's location on the disk.
Wouldn't "Unattach" (don't know if that is good English)
or "detach" be a little better?

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Confirming...  We make it sound like it will be deleted on disk!  "Detach"
should be better, imo.

Comment 2

[jglick]

Potentially "Remove" instead of "Delete", but i don't like "Unattach" or 
"Detach". 

Comment 3

[robinf]

"Remove" instead of "Delete" sounds good. Good catch.

Comment 4

[Hakon]

Remove sounds too similar to delete, at least to me.

Comment 5

[robinf]

How about "Discard" instead of "Delete" then?

Comment 6

[jglick]

According to Websters:
Delete - to eliminate especially by blotting out, cutting out, or erasing.
Remove - to change the location, position, station, or residence of. to 
transfer. 

Remove is the correct team. We use it other places in the product where 
something is being taken off a list, etc. but still exists. For example, the 
"Customize My Sidebar" dialog and the "Select Addresses" dialog.

Comment 7

[Alex Bishop]

Outlook Express uses 'Remove'.

Comment 8

[Hakon]

OK, byt let me just point out that the Linux command for deletion of a file is
"rm" (which I assume is short for "remove". Thus, it's still too closely related
to "delete" in order to be doubtlessly intuitive for any user in my opinion.
So, with all my respect, I understand I'm not the one who make descissions here,
but my vote is still for "detach".

Comment 9

[Alex Bishop]

Would 'Remove Attachment from Message' be better? 'Detach' just sounds weird to me.

Comment 10

[Hakon]

OK, if "detach" is deprecated then I guess "remove" will be sufficient.

Comment 11

[Matt Coughlin]

As far as usage of the word "detach", consider that the word or phrase that best
describes the internal behavior isn't necessarily the best word or phrase to
present to the user.

As an example, when I was co-oping with IBM in college, they were working on a
large text-based windowing system, that included being able to scroll through
large text windows.  The programmers viewed the behavior in terms of having a
physical scroll that you roll down if you want to see the top portion, and you
roll up if you want to see the bottom portion.  And so in the user interface
they established "down" (as in scrolling down) as the action that takes you
towards the top portion and "up" as the action that takes you towards the bottom
portion.  But this is the opposite of how the user sees it.  If the user wants
to moves towards the top portion, they think "up" because they want to see
what's UP above the currently visible portion.  And vice-versa.  So in this case
usage of internal terms caused an unintuitive user interface.

It's probably best to totally disregard the internal behavior when choosing
words and phrases to present to the user.  Which is why it may be a bad idea to
have programmers establish details of the user interface; they'll tend to use
internal terms.  Sometimes, by chance, the right term will wind up being the
same term that the programmers use internally.  Sometimes it won't be.  Whatever
allows the user to understand the software in the most intuitive manner possible.


As far as "delete" versus "remove", having a relatively small number of generic
terms for the user to deal with may be more digestable than having a large
number of specialized terms.  "Delete" can be generalized to refer to actions
related to deletion, removal, detaching, etc.  And the user gains more of a
comfort level with the term because it's so often encountered.  Getting the user
to be clear on the subtleties between "delete" and "remove", and to understand
why one term is used in some situations and a different term is used in others,
may confuse the user more than it helps them.  They may perceive it as an
inconsistency, one that subconsciously causes them to feel less comfortable with
the software.

As an end user, I can't recall ever seeing the terms "remove" or "detach" in
software I've used.  Maybe I've seen them, but it sure doesn't stick in memory.
 If I saw those terms I'd be initially unsure of what they meant, and it would
interrupt whatever intuitive flow of work I had going at the time.  I'd most
likely chalk it up to a UI that hadn't been thoroughly designed for consistency
and ease of use (whether or not that's actually the case, that would be my
reaction).

"Delete" is a familiar word, there's a very high comfort level associated with
it, and for the typical end user that's a significant factor.

Comment 12

[timeless]

you've *never* seen 'remove'?
i guess you haven't used windows*4+ recently:
add/remove programs
add/remove hardware (w2k)

telephony (w98) control panel (telephony tab)
system (w98) control panel (device manager tab)
keyboard (w98) control panel (language tab)
game controllers (w98) control panel (general tab)
modems (w98) control panel (general tab)
network (w98) control panel (configuration tab)

i can find other places, but i just felt like noting a few...

Comment 13

[Matt Coughlin]

In the examples pointed out in comment #12, the usage of "remove" is equivalent
to "uninstall".  I'm not sure if this has any relevancy to dealing with attachments.

Comment 14

[Brodie]

I understood the meaning of comment #12 as being to refute the claim that that
'remove' is not in common usage in user interfaces with a similar meaning. It is
also commonly seen in places where entries are being added and removed from lists.

The use of 'remove' meaning to remove an attachment is semantically the same and
distances itself from the concept of physically deleting the file from the disk.
Considering that Microsoft in their mail product has used the term 'remove' for
a long time for the same functionality, I don't think that users would be
confused by the use of the term 'remove'.

Comment 15

[Matt Coughlin]

Certainly seems like the general consensus is for "remove".  I felt like my
reply to comment #12 was partly a knee-jerk response, which may not have been
helpful.  But I'd like to toss a few more thoughts up in the air if I may...

Factor 1: If the goal is to use the most appropriate word possible, where
"delete" essentially means "physically disposing of" and "remove" essentially
means "change the location or status of", then I'd say an important point to
consider is this:

When the average user adds an attachment, and then decides that they don't want
to include it in the e-mail after all, in their perception (as much as it's
possible to know) are they disposing of a copy of the file which was added to
the e-mail (in which case "delete" would be appropriate), or are they simply
removing a textual reference to the file (or something equivalent, in which case
"remove" would be appropriate)?  I'm not talking in terms of what's really
happening internally, but what seems to be happening to the end user.  In other
words, from the viewpoint of the end user, which term is more appropriate?

Factor 2: For consistency between the terms for inclusion and exclusion of
attachments (trying to use neutral words to refer to them here), it seems like
"add" and "remove" are intuitively paired together, as are "insert" and
"delete", whether or not the combination of the terms are entirely appropriate
technically.  If so, since "add" already exists in this context, that suggests
either using "remove" instead of "delete", or using "insert" instead of "add"
and keeping "delete" as is.  "Add and delete" doesn't seem intuitive, nor does
"insert and remove".

I'd suggest seeing this as a choice between "add and remove" and "insert and
delete", rather than a choice between "remove" and "delete".

Factor 3: As mentioned in comment #14, if Outlook (which I'm not about to
install on my own computer :-) uses "remove", then that's a significant
user-familiarity factor to consider.  "Remove" would be familiar to users of
Outlook.

btw, does Outlook also use "add" or does it use "insert" (for adding
attachments), or does it use some other term?

Factor 4: As described in comment #11 - the factor of how non-confusing is it to
the grandma user? (an extremely non-tech-savvy user.)  In this case,
appropriateness doesn't even begin to come into play.  It's more a matter of
what term would the user easily understand the purpose of - which may simply be
whatever term have they've usually seen in the past.

Factor 5: If "remove" is used, would it be too confusing to the users as to why
"delete" is used in some cases in Mozilla (like "Edit|Delete", and "remove" is
used in other cases?  Would the differences in meaning be too subtle for most
users to be clear on?  It is, after all, a little unclear even to some of us
here (not just myself).

There's no chance of using "remove" as a general purpose word ("Edit|Remove"
wouldn't be good), but it might be possible to use "delete" in this way.  If
people feel that a general-purpose word is needed, rather than a number (2 or
more) of specific words, then the only option would be "delete".

On the whole, I see some reason to consider both choices.  It may be a matter of
which of these factors (or other factors) is the highest priority?

Comment 16

[Andrés G. Aragoneses]

My vote goes to "remove" instead of "delete". Adding me to the CC list.

Comment 17

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Reading through all the comments above, I can't help but think that this issue
is being over-analyzed.

Arguments against using "remove":
1) Comment 8: "rm" is the linux command for delete.

Is this really going to confuse anybody? If someone is familiar with Unix
commands, I think they will be able to manage removing an attachment from a
compose window without being too "confused" about the term used to indicate the
action.

2) Comment 11, comment 14: Too many different terms, not "digestible" for the
end user

"As far as "delete" versus "remove", having a relatively small number of generic
terms for the user to deal with may be more digestible than having a large
number of specialized terms."

Although "Remove" and "Delete" are semantically similar, I again doubt that any
user will feel "uncomfortable" seeing two different terms used for two different
actions. Using the same word ("generic term"?) to describe different actions
would be more confusing, in my opinion. Two similar words wouldn't really
constitute a "large number of specialized terms" either.

3)Comment 11: "Remove" isn't commonly used in software

"As an end user, I can't recall ever seeing the terms "remove" or "detach" in
software I've used.  Maybe I've seen them, but it sure doesn't stick in memory.
If I saw those terms I'd be initially unsure of what they meant, and it would
interrupt whatever intuitive flow of work I had going at the time."

Again, it's seems ridiculous to me that any user, regardless of experience,
would be "initially unsure" of what "remove" means in this context. "Remove" is
neither uncommon nor ambiguous.

Arguments for using "remove"

1) Logically, you could say that users want to "remove" the attachment from the
message. I can't even begin to imagine anyone being confused as to the meaning
of that option.

2) As comment 14 mentions, in Windows, "Remove" is often used to indicate the
removal of an item from a list. In this case, it's the removal of the file from
the attachments list.

3) I heavily doubt that "regular" (or "average") users will put as much thought
into their action as the author of comment 11 and comment 15 imply.

4) Outlook Express (a mail client used by many "average" or "below average"
users) uses "remove". I haven't seen any mass confusion resulting from that UI
choice. It's also identical for users migrating, not that it's that big of a
deal to begin with.

I think that it's rather silly to get into long, intense discussions of the
seemingly disastrous implications of the substitution of one word in the UI. As
I see it, "Remove" most clearly indicates the desired actions, and should
therefore replace "Delete".

Comment 18

[Aaron Lawrence]

Note the same thing is being discussed in similar detail in bug 296781.
The only difference is that's for Thunderbird.
IMHO it is silly to have two bugs with exactly the same topic in two related apps... but Bugzilla unfortunately cannot apply a bug to two products.

Another thing I noticed is that what an attachment "is" differs when composing from when reading. Prior to sending the attachment is just a reference, so indeed deleting is a deceptive term. On the other hand once the attachment is sent (editing an existing mail) there really is a copy of the file inside Mozilla's mail store.

Anyway, I think "Remove" is OK, though I don't personally care for it. Will we get another bug filed by people who prefer delete, if this one is done?

Comment 19

[Moritz Franckenstein]

I also vote for "remove". But in fact it doesn't matter.

Unexperienced users don't know what a reference or a link is, and when they added a file, they see it as a copy, which can also be deleted again, not affecting the original file. They wouldn't care, if it was called "remove" and see no difference.

The more experienced user might know that it's only a reference. But also this user is experienced enough to know that there is no reason for the developers to provide an option to physically delete the original file. It makes no sense at all. He would see "delete" as deletion of the reference.

So there is no type of user left, who could misunderstand "delete" here.

I could only think of a type of user who could think of users who misunderstand it. And this seldom type of user could be the reason to change it :)

And don't forget other languages - when we have 2 words to choose from in english, there might be 3 or 4 in other languages, and there is not always a direct mapping. When I now think about, what I would prefer in my mother language german, I come to the conclusion, that there I even feel better with "löschen" (delete) instead of "entfernen" (remove). Hmmm. :)