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0e1f616
(Get the code!)
> The timeout is there mainly for people who select the action,
> and then forget to confirm the action and walk away.
The timeout as a feature has an extremely bad ratio of befuddleness vs. usefulness to the user.
When a feature is only marginally useful, and yet it is bound to confuse people every time they see it, then the feature needs to be either redesigned or left out. I would not mind at all seeing it left out, but if you want some suggestion as to how it could be improved, here:
a) Move the text below the buttons, make it tiny so that it looks like a footnote, and change it to "if you do nothing the machine will shut down in X seconds". This way, the text makes sense. As it is now, it doesn't.
b) Make the number of seconds auto-refresh to show the actual number of seconds remaining. As it stands now, the user is under the impression that the countdown is not counting (part of the befudleness I mentioned earlier) so 59 seconds later the dialog will still read "shutdown in 60 seconds" and then poof -- it shuts down in your face. That's terrible as far as user experience is concerned.