Perhaps rather than an "undo" button, there should be a "revert" button that reverts the settings to the way they were configured when the dialog was opened, and perhaps a way of reverting the settings to the system defaults... although that does add more complexity to the UI. Some applications (CompizConfig Settings Manager, for instance) have a little "reset" button next to every option that resets it to the default... the functionality is useful, but I find it very cluttering and space-wasting. It would be nice if someone could figure out how to implement revert-to-when-window-opened and revert-to-default without cluttering the UI too much... On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 11:46 -0500, Matthew Nuzum wrote: > On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com> wrote: > > There's been a bug open about it for many years... not so much a conscious > > decision as an inability to decide on the best solution, at the time: > > <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95110> > > > > It's certainly something we ought to revisit at some point. > > Ah, well, that makes me feel better about the situation. I'll read up > on it this weekend. > > In the world of websites, which is where I spend most of my time, we > traditionally always asked users, "Are you sure you want to do this?" > which is very tiring. It's necessary sometimes, since you may be stuck > with the possibly serious consequences. However the trend has been > moving towards giving users the ability to undo things. This feels so > natural and works very well. For example in gmail if you delete an > email the operation is performed immediately but there is a notice > shown (unobtrusively) allowing you to undo the operation. > > To me it seems the first step would be to create a UI guideline. The > least intrusive way I can think of to do this would be to keep the > current system in place, with non-atomic changes that take effect > instantly, and an "undo" button to revert. > > Instead of using the transactional approach employed in MS Windows, > where you hit the save button to save all changes and cancel to undo > all changes, each click of the "undo" button could undo the last > change progressively until you're back to where you were when you > first started messing with things. Of course, for some applications it > might make sense and a single undo step may be appropriate. I don't > think an "undo" button needs to have a "redo" button to compliment it. > "Undo" is your escape route. > > By creating a UI guideline it allows applications to start working > towards the solution in a way that they can be confident about - so > they won't have to undo their changes. :-) >
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