I've been working on some modals for an app, and I have done some research into how various confirmation/abort options are presented to the user in the footer of a modal.
A user over on Dribbble posted a nice shot with this treatment for his buttons:
I've seen this treatment before, where the "abort" option isn't actually a button, but never read any sort of reasoning or justification behind it. Could anyone give me some justification? I seem to prefer this method, but that's not enough of a reason to style it that way.
My assumption is that the user has intentionally taken some actions to get this modal, so the option to complete the full action is more prominently displayed than an exit (in case they made a mistake).
Extra points for a link to a study or discussion.