GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 152850
Save dialog should pop up a replace dialog if the file exists
Last modified: 2005-07-15 17:53:36 UTC
Per conversation with jrb and owen: When saving, if a file already exists, the file chooser should have a hook to automatically throw the Replace File dialog instead of forcing the app to do it.
*** Bug 152860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This problem applies only to recent Firefox versions what use the Gtk+ file chooser. When you accidentaly try to save a file with the name of an already existing file, you get a confirmation dialog (file exists, do you want to overwrite it). If you answer "no", the save dialog is closed and you are not given a chance to enter another name. To reproduce: 1. Open any web page in Firefox 2. Hit Ctrl+S 3. Save the page 4. Hit Ctrl+S again 5. Try to save the file again with the same name. 6. You will get a "File already exists, do you want to replace it?" dialog. 7. Click on "No" The save dialog disappears. Expected result: the save dialog would remain and let me enter a different file name.
Oops. This was meant to be a new bug report in bugzilla.ubuntu.com. I pasted the texts into the wrong browser tab. Where did I put my brown paper bag?
We need a boolean property in the file chooser called "confirm-overwrite", and the default should be FALSE. This is to keep compatibility with applications which already pop up their confirmation dialogs. When the program sets the property to TRUE, save dialogs should confirm before exiting.
Fixed on HEAD. See this for the details, or read the documentation: http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news-2005-07.html#14
Nice. I have a couple HIG comments after looking at the dialog. The button labels should use header capitalization. For example, "Select another file" should be "Select Another File". Also, the dialog should not have a window title, i.e. "Question" should be removed.
I just fixed the buttons; thanks for the reminder. Can you please file a bug about the "Question" bit? That's the responsibility of GtkMessageDialog.
I opened bug 310443 about the "Question" window title issue.
I added support for this to gnome-search-tool, but the dialog is always displayed whether the file already exists or not. ?
This is great news (the dialog that is). I just have another HIG nitpick. The primary text should be punctuated in 'newspaper headline' style, i.e. no terminating period. cheers
Sorry, "Select Another File" is wrong. The user is not supposed to select an other *file*, he is supposed to provide an other filename (probably a filename for that no file yet exists). So please change this at least to "Select Another Filename".
Thanks Federico. The Cancel icon feels bad. It suggests the "Select another file" operation is unusual or bad. I'd rather see a Back icon in its place, to suggest that you're merely going one step back in the process of selecting a file (a'la Wizard).
Created attachment 49225 [details] Current UI The image is from http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/misc/gtkfilechooser-confirm.png Usability squad, do you share the feeling that the stock icons and labels used in this dialog are not appropriate?
Something definately doesn't feel quite right about this, the labels really shouldn't be so long. They should be very terse ideally one word only. I might go with: [ Try Again ] [ Replace ] (feels very Mac OS to me for some reason) I do not think the Refresh icon is appropriate for Replace, it only happens to look vaguely appropriate because of the default them and I am certain this will break badly in other themes. I'm not sure if the Stock Replace (Find and Replace) icon is appropriate as it is more associated with replacing text but it might work. If the cancel icon is appropriate it might be best to also go ahead use the stock label Cancel (and spare translators the extra work). If we were to use a different label like "Try Again" it should really become a stock item and we would have to reconsider the labels we use all over the place (I'm of the opinion almost every menu/button label in GTK should be reusable Stock). Cancel may not make it absolutely clear that you are only going to cancel this current dialog rather than the whole file chooser but users will discover pretty quickly it is the former, and it is what people have come to expect from other file choosers. Using the back button doesn't sound like a bad idea but using Cancel is the safer more conservative choice. (Changed the OS to All.) But that is just my humble opinion...
- Bold text should be in 'newspaper headline' style, so "File '%s' Already Exists" (with no trailing punctuation) would be shorter and more appropriate - "Replace Existing File" (should be book title case) could just be "Replace". Dunno about the icon, could just be the stock 'Save' icon I suppose. - "Select Another File(name)" could, as Alan said, probably just be a bog standard "Cancel" button, although I share his concern that it might be interpreted as cancelling the whole Save operation.
OK, improved the message text; changed the buttons; fixed the "appears always" bug (sorry about that last one - the perils of late-night hacking). Fixed on CVS HEAD.
> Dunno about the icon, could just be the stock 'Save' icon I suppose. I like that idea. > I share his concern that it might be interpreted as cancelling the whole Save operation. When saving files from a web browser I would nearly prefer to cancel the action because I'm fairly careful about unique names and a file of the same name means I already have the file I want. Would make an interesting usability test but I dont think any of us have the time and energy to prove if it would actually be better for normal users.