MessageBox.Show(text) has blank caption - why?

[wizofaus]

MessageBox.Show() provides an overload where you supply only the text.
I figured that, like MFC and similar frameworks, the caption would be
the application name, which is 99% of the time what you would want.
But no...the documentation even states that the caption is blank. But
when would it ever be considered acceptable in a Windows application
that follows all the relevant GUI standards to have a blank title bar
(no caption)? Even under the raw Win32 API for MessageBox, the caption
is the word "Error" if you don't supply one. I can't think of any
reasonable justification for supplying this overload given its current
behaviour.

 

[Scott M.]

As opposed to your supposition that 99% of the time you would want the
application name as the messagebox's caption, I would say that 99% of the
time you wouldn't. I believe that Microsoft agrees and has changed the .NET
MessageBox() class to reflect that.

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

As opposed to your supposition that 99% of the time you would want the
application name as the messagebox's caption, I would say that 99% of the
time you wouldn't. I believe that Microsoft agrees and has changed the
.NET MessageBox() class to reflect that.

I have to disagree. A window's title bar carries important information,
leaving it blank is IMO a bad idea in general. Personally I do not see any
reason for using a blank title bar text.

 

[Scott M.]

I didn't say that leaving it blank was the way to go. What I said was that
99% of the time I want to put application specific data into the caption and
so, I wouldn't want the application name there. IMHO, leaving it blank it
MS's way of leaving the door open for the developer to put whatever they
want there without forcing something (the generic application title) that
you probably don't want.

 

[Stephany Young]

I get the impression that the 2 overloads of the MessageBox.Show method that
do not take a caption parameter have been provided so that we developers can
display a 'quick and dirty' message dialog when debugging without the need
to satisfy various other parameters of the other overloads of the method.
That is certainly the only situation where I use either of those 2
overloads.

Note also that with those 2 overloads, the dialog does not display an icon.
It would be very rare that I use MessageBox.Show, (except when
debugging/troubleshooting), without specifying an icon and therefore I must
supply a value for caption. (Certainly, I could supply an empty string to
get a blank title bar if I wanted that, but I can't think of a situation
where I would want to.)

I didn't say that leaving it blank was the way to go. What I said was that
99% of the time I want to put application specific data into the caption
and so, I wouldn't want the application name there. IMHO, leaving it blank
it MS's way of leaving the door open for the developer to put whatever they
want there without forcing something (the generic application title) that
you probably don't want.

 

[wizofaus]

I get the impression that the 2 overloads of the MessageBox.Show method that
do not take a caption parameter have been provided so that we developers can
display a 'quick and dirty' message dialog when debugging without the need
to satisfy various other parameters of the other overloads of the method.
That is certainly the only situation where I use either of those 2
overloads.

Note also that with those 2 overloads, the dialog does not display an icon.
It would be very rare that I use MessageBox.Show, (except when
debugging/troubleshooting), without specifying an icon and therefore I must
supply a value for caption. (Certainly, I could supply an empty string to
get a blank title bar if I wanted that, but I can't think of a situation
where I would want to.)

I agree - in fact I think it should use a default "error" icon too,
which is what MFC does.
It may be intended as a "quick and dirty" method, but I see no reason
why it can't assume some sensible defaults that will actually allow it
to be of real use in a genuine app (my application in this case is an
in-house license key generator, so I don't care too much, but a message
box with no title looks like some weird resource problem to me).

 

[Stephany Young]

But my whole point is that it is behaving 'sensibly'.

If I use either of those 2 overloads I don't want the framework
second-guessing me.

You may not care what your applications look like (even if they are only for
in-house use) but I sure as hell do!