send dialog / address book interaction unclear #1384

I just accidentally sent coins to the wrong address due to a misunderstanding of how the client works. I think there are a couple of usability issues which contributed to this happening, as well as my own carelessness.

What I did:

• go to the 'send' tab
• paste an address into the 'pay to' box. the 'label' automatically was filled in, confirming that I typed the right address
• clicked the first icon to the right of the 'pay to' box to see the address book
• looked to see if the address was in there. it wasn't. clicked 'ok' to dismiss the dialog
• back at the 'send' tab, the label field was still showing the right value, so I didn't notice that the 'ok' in the previous step had changed the 'pay to' field
• typed an amount and hit 'send'.

The amount ended up going to the first address in my address book, not to the address with the label that was displayed when I clicked 'send'.

Two comments:

• when the address book is first opened up, I'd prefer if no address was selected, rather than the first (no label) address. I hadn't selected an address, so thought that 'ok' would leave everything unchanged.
• when I click 'ok' in the address book causing an address to be copied to the 'pay to' box of the 'send' tab, update the 'label' field (or lack of label) accordingly. currently it leaves the label field unchanged which is misleading. I checked the label field before hitting send, and it was still showing the label I wanted to send to. But the address had been changed, and that is where the funds went.

Oops :/ Apologies for the inconvenience.

Agreed with your suggestions. Updating the label as well was the original behavior of ok, but the code for that has been changed around a "few" times (#1092, #858, #1080, #840) so it might be a regression. It is really hard to keep up with peoples expectations with the current form format.

Maybe it would be better if the label and address were shown as one visual entity, for example email-ish label [address] instead of two separate fields. This would prevent confusion as to what the label refers to (#1168) and problems like this, as the entire field is replaced at once.

The "Ok" button on the address book would be better to be explicit "Choose Address" when eh, choosing addresses.

I think having an address selected by default isn't ideal. If I click the address book icon then click 'ok' without selecting an address I would like it to leave the 'to' field unchanged.

Luckily the address I sent the coins to was an old instawallet address of mine that I happened to have kept the URL for, so I didn't lose anything.

Agreed.

Phew...

I can confirm this bug in 0.6.2, This only happens when an address has "(no label)" in the address book.

There is an other unclear feature.

• choose an address with label from the address book
• change the label in the send tab
• choose the same address again from the address book

Now it won't change the label back to the one from the address book.

@burger2 My idea with #1361 was a proposal to make make it more clear what happens by grouping label/address together visually, but it was shot down very quickly.

I'd still like to somehow put label and address in one field, to make it more clear that they belong together, and that it's nonsensical to change one without the other.

People get confused about this all the time. The current behavior is not a bug, but a result from differing expectations (see also the issues I mention in the first comment).

Is this still an issue?

Yes. As if you click ok in the addresses and the bitcoin address don't have an label then only the bitcoin address will be copied to the send dialog and the label field still has the old text.

The label field in the send dialog should be empty if the bitcoin address don't have an label in address book.

As I said in my first reply on this issue, we've tried all the simple fixes to this. No matter what, there will always be someone complaining that the behavior is unintuitive, should be different, etc. In the end, it comes down to taste and individual habit, and we cannot take that into account for everyone.

As I've also said before "People get confused about this all the time. The current behavior is not a bug, but a result from differing expectations".

What you are proposing would bring back issue #840.

The most dangerous problem, selecting the first address book entry automatically, was resolved. So unless someone has a great and very clear idea for reorganizing address/label entry that doesn't confuse anyone, we can close this issue.

But issue #840 don't have nothing to do with the address book. It was when you typed in a label and then pasted (ctrl+v in windows) in the bitcoin address field, then the label got deleted.

I think @dooglus should comment on this issue.

And the fix about not selecting automatically when address book was opened is very good.