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Modal proponents{{Who|date=September 2010}} may argue that many common activities are modal and users adapt to them. An example of modal interaction is that of driving motor vehicles. A driver may be surprised when pressing the acceleration pedal does not accelerate the vehicle in the forward direction, most likely because the vehicle has been placed in an operating mode like park, neutral, or reverse. Modal interfaces require training and experience to avoid mode errors like these.
Interface expert [[Jef Raskin]] came out strongly against modes, writing, "Modes are a significant source of errors, confusion, unnecessary restrictions, and complexity in interfaces." Later he notes, " 'It is no accident that swearing is denoted by #&%!#$&,' writes my colleague, Dr. James Winter; it is 'what a typewriter used to do when you typed numbers when the Caps Lock was engaged'." Raskin dedicated his book ''[[The Humane Interface]]'' to describe the principles of a modeless interface for computers. Those principles were implemented in the [[Canon Cat]] and [[Archy (software)|Archy]] systems.
Some interface designers have recently taken steps to make [[modal window]]s more obvious and user friendly by darkening the background behind the window or allowing any mouse click outside of the modal window to force the window to close – a design called a [[Lightbox (JavaScript)|Lightbox]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html|title=10 Best Application UIs|author=Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox}}</ref> – thus alleviating the risk of modal errors. [[Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)|Jakob Nielsen]] states as an advantage of modal dialogs that it improves user awareness. "When something does need fixing, it's better to make sure that the user knows about it." For this goal, the Lightbox design provides strong visual contrast of the dialog over the rest of the visuals. However, while such a method may reduce the risk of inadvertent wrong interactions, it does not solve the problem that the modal window blocks use of the application's normal features and so prevents the user from taking any action to fix the difficulty, or even from scrolling the screen to bring into view information which they need to correctly choose from the options the modal window presents, and it does nothing to alleviate the user's frustration at having blundered into a dead end from which they cannot escape without some more or less destructive consequence.
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