"Delete" is the wrong verb, suggests I'm deleting the file, which I'm not. Sure you could say, well you're deleting the unsaved changes, but this isn't what it means on any other computer or even in other Mac apps.
The same update (Lion?) ruined saving overall. Apple has insisted that apps should never have a "save as." You can hold opt to do it anyway, but it silently overwrites the original too. Thanks. Apple might've hoped this catches on, but again nothing else does it this way. I get they want me to duplicate the file first, but no, I already made changes that I want to save-as, it's too late to duplicate.
If they were going for blurring the line between memory and disk, that didn't work either because there is still the concept of saved vs unsaved changes (that can get "deleted"). It's not like Google Docs.
One of the most influential books I ever read was About Face by Alan Cooper. What he said about this bad modal dialogue is that you should simply not ask the user, and let them undo later.
This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow for iOS later on. And now it's common in web apps.
I once heard Cooper talk at a conference. He said that he was indeed the father of Visual Basic, in the sense that he had a little participation at the inception but most of the work was done by someone else. I think you can draw a line between that kind of self deprecation and the ego level required to look through someone else's eyes and design good UI.
Remember in 1990 (the pictures are from around then) there wasn't unlimited fast disk space. There was a good chance you were saving to a floppy disk which not only was slow, but might not be in the drive all the time. At least in 1990 you could assume a hard drive - but you couldn't safely assume there was enough free space on the drive to save anything, since 40mb drives filled fast.
35 years latter we live in a different world where you can assume an unlimited fast data connection to a data center. Saving and allowing undo is possible today.
It took me quite a while to get used to the "save continuously, keep revision history" of Google Docs, but in that context I've gotten used to it. For something like code, or image edits, etc. I still prefer explicit "Save" or "Save As..." operations that I control, because quite often I get myself boxed into something that I just want to throw away and start over.
Well we're rapidly approaching a world going back to 256GB (or smaller) SSDs because VC money is being used to buy up all semiconductor and HDD output by AI hyperscalers. Everything will end up cloud storage, you'll own nothing and like it.
Also the minimum Word document is far larger than 2KB. IIRC it's about 10x that size for an empty Word document (docx).
Sydney Padua's awesome, mostly true, steampunk graphic novel "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" jokes about the error messages that might have produced by the difference engine. One example occurs when a character tries to stop a sequence that may or may not destroy a precious manuscript:
Annulation lever activated!
Do you wish to continue?
Engage STOP lever to continue. Engage CONTINUE lever to stop.
I agree that such forced choices are insulting. It's about the same as also including a disabled "No" button with hover text that reads "disabled because fuck you".
We added a clause in our coding standard to make all booleans reference the positive frame of reference only. This happened after I got fed up with dealing with too many if !(!not_has_missing_field) operators. Just.... make everything positive: if (is_field_present)
I try to keep to that, but sometimes the flag is turning on a negative feature, disabling that which is the default and will remain so for compatibility reasons.
Sometimes it is worth the effort of going through and changing the logic elsewhere to keep the boolean positive, sometimes that would be too much effort to retest at the time.
Another option I like, when I have a config object interpreting things so I'm reading doing `if (config.IsWhateverThatThingIsEnabled)` then I can just have paired properties to pick from when I want to check IsEnabled or IsDisabled.
I've come across code where there is an overide for an option to disable something and the naming plus the logical not really make you think about what is happening…
Agree. And I've been flagging double negatives in PRs for years (e.g. `not undead`). It makes me feel like the Ned Flanders of programmers.
But RuboCop detects `!!something`, and I actually like that idiom, because I prefer to convert into true boolean types before passing them to a method, since it makes the intention clear in the code.
A program I occasionally use has a "Don't close" button in that dialog. Of course I'm more used to "Don't save", so I often hit it and then am surprised when the program stays open.
Rip John C. Dvorak, writer of the Abort/Retry/Fail column from PC Magazine.
On a different note, never underestimate the value of a modal dialog that gives you a chance to retry an IO operation that failed. Loose USB cables and network shares over Wifi can make those happen a lot more often.
Keeping one of the disks from the pile was peak bff/sibling rivalry antics. It's like keeping out one of the pieces of the puzzle so nobody can finish it but you.
“Maybe later” and variants annoyed me to no end until I realized that the implication is that you’re not making an indelible choice. As with anything, it can be overused, but I personally enjoy not having to think about whether I can change my mind later.
Aspirin had (though this is increasingly dated) unique cultural currency as a headache medicine for quite a while after it stopped being the overwhelmingly dominant first-line OTC remedy.
For a site about usability, I was going to gripe about the tiny font, low contrast, and unresponsive layout until I saw that. It does look more suitable at 1024x768.
There’s no ambiguity there. The user is very well-informed that they’re about to quit and lose the document they were working on.
The same update (Lion?) ruined saving overall. Apple has insisted that apps should never have a "save as." You can hold opt to do it anyway, but it silently overwrites the original too. Thanks. Apple might've hoped this catches on, but again nothing else does it this way. I get they want me to duplicate the file first, but no, I already made changes that I want to save-as, it's too late to duplicate.
If they were going for blurring the line between memory and disk, that didn't work either because there is still the concept of saved vs unsaved changes (that can get "deleted"). It's not like Google Docs.
In some instances this could be a file on disk. But it does not have to be.
Red "Delete" on the far left, then on the far right a gray/neutral "Cancel" button, and an orange (the app's primary color) "Save"
This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow for iOS later on. And now it's common in web apps.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118766571?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...
35 years latter we live in a different world where you can assume an unlimited fast data connection to a data center. Saving and allowing undo is possible today.
This lets you throw away and start over, but also gives you infinite undo even after "loading" an older version.
Also the minimum Word document is far larger than 2KB. IIRC it's about 10x that size for an empty Word document (docx).
Annulation lever activated!
Do you wish to continue?
Engage STOP lever to continue. Engage CONTINUE lever to stop.
Time remaining 5..4..3...
2. Still better than "Yes, Ask me Later" dialogues that are so insulting to users.
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[1] Or the BBC, or whoever, a great many are guilty of this sort of thing.
Sometimes it is worth the effort of going through and changing the logic elsewhere to keep the boolean positive, sometimes that would be too much effort to retest at the time.
Another option I like, when I have a config object interpreting things so I'm reading doing `if (config.IsWhateverThatThingIsEnabled)` then I can just have paired properties to pick from when I want to check IsEnabled or IsDisabled.
I've come across code where there is an overide for an option to disable something and the naming plus the logical not really make you think about what is happening…
But RuboCop detects `!!something`, and I actually like that idiom, because I prefer to convert into true boolean types before passing them to a method, since it makes the intention clear in the code.
On a different note, never underestimate the value of a modal dialog that gives you a chance to retry an IO operation that failed. Loose USB cables and network shares over Wifi can make those happen a lot more often.