[Usability] Re: cancel changes before closing a form/dialog

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 18:50, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I believe this
> list has todo with the gnome ui design.

It did once, for about a week :)  usability gnome org is the place to
ask these sorts of questions now, cc'ing them instead.

> If a user makes changes in a form/dialog (ie: application settings),
> and decide to cancel the changes, what keyboard shortcut can one use,
> if the form/dialog doesn't have a cancel button.
> 
> Surely this must be possible, I searched all the help for this, but
> couldn't find anything. I thought pressing Esc might do it, but that is
> the same as closing the form and changes get saved automaticly.  If it
> isn't possible, there is a serious design flaw in the gnome ui.

It's not currently possible, and it's a known deficiency... although the
millions of Mac users don't seem to mind too much :)  The main problem
really is thrashing out agreement on the best way to do this...
suggestions have included Undo buttons, Reset buttons, Default buttons,
and even a desktop-wide preference archiving/rollback system, all of
which have their pros and cons.  For some of the discussion, see:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95110
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-June/msg00137.html

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems