Re: [Usability] Merge Open/Save (was "Re: Save Icon")

[David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 17:43 +0300, Alexey Rusakov wrote:

> This is close to what Jef Raskin proposes in his "Humane Interface" 
> book. The idea is that instead of Open/Save there should be exactly one 
> button (he names it "Disk", IIRC), that does all the work. If the 
> document is newer on disk and not changed in the memory, it loads the 
> document. If it is changed in the memory (i.e. it is newer that a copy 
> on disk), this button performs "Save". Well, and if there is a conflict, 
> the button reveals it, and lets the user decide. I think this idea is 
> quite promising.

I strongly object! First of all, one button should not perform two
totally different things -- and open vs. save is definitely not similar
-- and secondly I see quite the problems with normal interfaces. How
could I open a document in a second tab of Gedit? How do I fit "Save as"
in this concept or "Open Recently"?
If a document is newer in memory, I might want to reopen it from the old
version, because I did some changes, I shouldn't have done, and copy
paste elements from the newer version (it always pisses me of, that this
is not possible in Windows).

Maybe I'm just too used the the current concept, but it simply works
very well for me.

David