GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 126682
Save Dialog Problems
Last modified: 2020-12-04 18:20:12 UTC
The GNOME HIG currently includes an example for a save dialog. Unfortunately, it has a few issues. - "Close without Saving" doesn't tell the user that they will lose their changes unless they read the subtext or have seen the dialog before. - It includes too much text. "Save changes to 'document' before closing?", combined with more descriptive button labels should eliminate the need for a subheader. I've looked at a few save dialogs from various applications (gedit, AbiWord, Gnumeric) - note that applications are not following the HIG - and have come up with a new dialog that combines the best features of the (albeit HIG violating) applications. There are three dialogs: - Save As. This dialog is used when the document has never been saved. It includes non-document-name specific text and does not reference "changes". - Save. This dialog includes the document name and is used when the document has already been saved. - Revert. This is used when the user selects "revert" from the file menu. All dialogs have the following features: - All of the buttons which will result in data loss contain the text "Discard" and feature the trash icon - making it clear that the user will lose data. ("Discard", "Discard Changes", and "Revert & Discard") - Terse questions. The dialogs are worded with less than 5 words. Only the revert dialog features subtext. - Warning symbol. This dialog could result in data loss, so a warning symbol is warranted. - Descriptive Titles. The titlebars all feature descriptive, terse titles. (Unsaved Document/Unsaved Changes/Revert to Saved) I have a Glade file available if anyone is intrested.
Created attachment 21348 [details] Sample Dialogs
I would prefer to get completly rid of the 'Save' in the [Discard | Cancel | Save] and do it the old Gimp (<2.2) way where you have only [Cancel | Discard]. The reason for this is simple, 'Save' is a *dangerous* operation which can course data loss, it is not only usefull saving changes, it is also very 'good' at overwriting valueable files with junk. A simple, extremly common, workflow in Gimp looks like this: 1. Open some valuable existing image/photo as starting point 2. Apply a few filters and experiment with it 3. Close image and discard the results, since they where just experiments, didn't turn out as expected or whatever Now with a [Discard | Cancel | Save]-dialog the default action is 'Save' which would overwrite the original image with the worthless experimental stuff without having a way to undo it, it would destroy user data. This has happened for me counterless times in all kind of applications, Gimp prior 2.2 was one of the few application which didn't have a [Discard | Cancel | Save] kind of dialog and I have to say that I NEVER, in five years of almost daily usage, lost a file with the Gimp dialog, if I want to save the changes and forget todo so before close, I simply press cancel and go the normal File->Save way, this requires some more clicks, but its really worth the added safety and it doesn't happen all that often anyway, since most people will save rather frequently and thus won't even see the close-dialog at all. And as a sidenote, Gimp2.2 has now switched to the [Discard | Cancel | Save]-kind of dialog and after only two days of usage I have already lost data due to that dialog. Gimp devopler however refuse to switch back and argue with HIG (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162837).
This was here first, but I didn't see it until after I assigned the other bug to myself. Merging the two... *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 162947 ***