Re: "Undo" button in capplets

[Denis Washington <dwashington gmx net>]

Calum Benson wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 19:00 +0200, Denis Washington wrote:
>
>   
> > My two cents on this:
> >
> > "Revert": As soon you made only one change that you like to keep, this 
> > is pretty much useless.
> >     
>
> Perhaps... on the other hand, "Revert" is bascially just the equivalent
> of "Cancel" for instant apply dialogs, and nobody complains that
> "Cancel" is useless :)
>
>   
> > "Reset to Defaults": How should a user remember which are the defaults? 
> > How would the defaults really help the user, given that they are really 
> > very few settings that can seriously "break" anything? What if I use the 
> > feature and realize that I like the defaults less than the settings before?
> >     
>
> I'm with you on that one.
>
>   
> > "Undo" is a common thing in most applications, and it Just Works.
> >     
>
> [Somewhat of an aside: how many GNOME apps actually do have Undo?  Of
> the ones I have open at the moment, only Evolution does.]
>
> My concern about Undo in Preferences dialogs has always just been
> over-complexity, really.  Undo is usually a linear operation, whereas
> Preferences dialogs are random access, so immediately there isn't a
> great fit.  If I want to undo the second-last thing I changed, chances
> are I'm still likely to remember what I changed it from, so it's going
> to be easier just to change it back than click Undo twice to wipe out my
> last two changes.  (And if I can't remember what I changed it from, then
> I'm just as unlikely to remember what the last change I made was, which
> I now have to somehow redo after it was wiped out by the first click on
> Undo.)
>   

I was especially thinking about those options which are difficult to 
undo manually. A good example would be changing colors in the (yet to 
come) Appearance capplet; very few users will remember the code of the 
previous color after they changed it.

> One-level Undo would be simpler, but its functionality seems so trivial
> as to be useless in most Preferences dialogs.  At the other extreme,
> random access Undo (a la Photoshop) could work for trivial Preferences
> dialogs where none of the settings are related to any of the others, but
> could get horrendously messy otherwise.
>   

The good thing about multiple undo would be that it would replace the 
Revert functionality while also allowing to undo single operations. A 
photoshop-like undo history seems overly complex to me for something 
simple like preferences dialogs. IMO an Undo button is, from a user's 
perspective, simple and elegant.

> Then there would doubtless be people who would want a Redo button to
> counter the Undo button, so they could quickly toggle between 'before'
> and 'after' states to see the effect.  A not unreasonable request, but
> it would lead to pretty cluttered dialogs.  

It doesn't necessarily have to look cluttered:
http://ultimum-projekt.de/mockups/test.png

> (Perhaps we could think of
> another way to provide this functionality, as e.g. some photo editing
> apps do.)
>   

See my comment above.

> I guess my general feelings are that very few Preference settings are so
> complicated that you can't remember what you just changed them from, and
> that most Preference dialogs should be simple enough that if you get in
> a mess, it's no big deal just to Cancel (or Revert) and start again.
>   

I'm not sure about that one. One might have to sum up the settings for 
which it would make sense. I could think of:

* Colors
* Restoring removed themes or backgrounds removed from the backgrounds list
* Precisely restoring the previous value of a slider (for instance those 
in Mouse / Keyboard)

> Despite all that, I'm glad we're having this discussion again though--
> I'd really like to see it resolved this time.
>   

I too :)

> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>
>   

Regards,
Denis