TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2008-07 > 1216059002


From: "John Cardinal" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Last Edited date control wish
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:10:02 -0400
In-Reply-To: <17bb01c8e5d4$d6a4c850$6501a8c0@TOM>


Excalibur131 wrote:
> But it also makes sense not to change anything if nothing has changed.

Tom,

There are two issues with that.

First, for complex windows with subwindows, it can be difficult for the
software to determine whether or not something has changed. While it's
probably always _possible_ to determine if there was a deliberate change or
not, it's sometimes not _practical_, i.e., it's a better use of time to
spend the engineering effort elsewhere.

Second, complex software always has bugs, and it's nice to have a way to
force something to be written in order to guarantee that the data is record
as it currently appears. This shouldn't be necessary very often, and in a
perfect world would never be necessary, but software designers, engineers,
etc., are human.

> Maybe it wouldn't be an issue if the [OK] button was changed
> to [Save]. To me, Save is an act of doing something, while OK is just
that,
> it's OK as it is. Save might cause the user to think about what they are
> doing a bit more than the OK button does.

The [OK] button in the world of computer software interfaces doesn't mean
"it's OK as it is in the data files now" it means "it's OK as it is
displayed to me right now" and usually means that the software to take the
steps necessary to update it's internal state to match the displayed values.
OK sometimes means "Close this window, I'm done with it", but that's
typically only true when there is no other choice, such as when closing a
message window.

I say again that I understand why people might want the OK button in TMG to
work differently and they are free to lobby for that change. Meanwhile, I'll
lobby for it to stay as-is. A bigger issue is that from what I have seen,
most modern software updates records when a user clicks the [OK] button even
if the values haven't changed. If you have inadvertently changed something
via a slip of the fingers, clicking OK is going to save that inadvertent
change. Regardless of how TMG works, it's a bad practice to click OK when
you want Cancel.

John


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