Best Practices – Displaying Application Messages and Alerts

On my last post I wrote on how to debug and log error messages using Zend Framework and Firebug. Today I wanted to write on how to properly display messages and alerts to users.

There are different type of messages you can display to a user in a web application. From the typical validation messages, to a dreadful fatal error in your app.  Here are some rules I tend to follow when alerting the users that they must take an action without causing confusion:

• Use the same massaging system to display all messages
• Stick to 3 different types: warning (yellow),  success (green), and error (red)
• On system error, do not display the system error to the user
• Display informative messages when interface can be confusing

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