Re: buttons again

[Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu realss com>]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2014, Scott Furry wrote:
> I've always thought of the "abc" button as "apply to all tracks". e.g. If 
> you are editing a few tracks and change the album name on one, clicking 
> the "abc" button causes the album name to be propagated to all selected 
> tracks".
>
> And a keyboard short cut for "apply all" would be nice (rather than 
> tabbing through - if tab order is set).

Indeed, verified. How very interesting, how did you figure that out!?

I could not fathom that!

This is how I thought:

First, the button is there even if user selected only one file, hence I 
could not mentally associate that button with batch operation. If I select 
multiple file, and user interface changes upone the second selection, I can 
for sure associate the change with the action I am doing, hence batch 
operation. (Such visual cue is implemented some cloud-based file managers.)

Second, it doesn't look like something clickable. If you have not written 
your OP, I never thought I can click it.

Third, upon being clicked, it gives no message nor any visual cue of action, 
hence I believe my click did not resolve to any action, reinforcing the idea 
that it is not a button after all. Even worse, the red file remain red after 
this action (despite in fact they are altered and saved), I am double sure I 
did not save them.

Forth, it is very unlikely the author intentionally chose to avoid the 
ubiquitous save symbol (a flopy disk) or confirm symbol (a check mark) and 
intended to use ABC for saving, again reinforce the idea that it is not for 
saving.

Fifith, ABC calls up the following connotations for me:
1. A fast index. A quick way to jump to files taged with head letter A-to-Z.
2. A selection, a list of pre-defined tag values.
3. A way to recall what I have typed before.
4. Musical notes of La Si Do.
None of these connotations can map to action concept "to save". I think the 
original idea of Abc perhaps is action concept "to tag", but 1) the whole 
software is for tags, you can say every control and UI elements are about 
tags; and 2) human has a natural difficulty associating pictures with 
actions, for example if you show a picture of a boy running, and ask what it 
means, 99.999% the people will say "Boy", and 0.001% will say "Run". The 
same apply here, ABC doesn't look like an action.

Sixth, the pop up message says: "Tag the selected files with this Year".
It is not sure if it meant "Tag THE SELECTED FILES with this Year" or "Tag 
the selected files with THIS Year" or "Tag the selected files with this 
YEAR". The most nature to me, is "Tag the selected files with this very year 
that the ABC symbol you are clicking represents", hence I start to think 
what year ABC represents and begain to expect that if I keep clicking Abc, 
some year will magically pop up and fill into the Year field.  For the last 
chance I failed to associate it with batch operation.

I am truly amazed, I failed after all these mental work. How do you get the 
remotest idea of the true purpose of "Abc" button? You must be a programmer 
- all programmers think alike, in a mysterious way!