[Design] Edits and saving in the Web UI

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Matthew, Thx for writing this up. Please see more questions in- 
line...

On May 7, 2007, at 7:58 PM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:

> 1. Periodic auto-save in the browser won't be mostly instantaneous  
> and painless like it is in a desktop app. There will be noticeable  
> lag when the front-end talks to the server -- and the UI will  
> suddenly go sluggish for what appears to the end-user to be no  
> reason. (And since it's supposed to be happening invisibly in the  
> background, I presume there would be no 'talking to the Mothership'  
> status message.)

Just to clarify, I'm suggesting we only 'auto-save' in cases where  
the user would need to explicitly click 'Save' anyway, aka when they  
"click away from the item and the DV changes what it displays". I'm  
not proposing that we auto-save at regular time intervals or every  
time the user commits out of a form field or every x-number of  
characters the user types, etc. In other words, the the web client  
won't be pinging the server any more than it would anyway with an  
explicit-Save design.

>
> 2. Some changes to data require a subsequent data-fetch. For  
> example, when the user makes a change to a recurring event, we need  
> the new recurrence expansion back from the server to repaint the UI.

Could we display a 'Processing...' message the way we do when we d- 
click to create new events on the calendar?

>
> 3. Data loss becomes more of a possibility if the user closes the  
> browser and doesn't bother to read the dialog we would pop up to  
> warn of unsaved changes.

Could we auto-save using the same cue we would use to pop-up the dialog?

> Browser crashes would mean likelihood of more lost data because  
> users would not be explicitly saving changes incrementally.

Well, I think the problem we're facing right now is that we fear  
users won't remember to save at all. Given the use cases we usually  
talk about, I'm not sure that the kinds of edits people will be doing  
in the Preview timeframe will span enough time such that users will  
be hitting Save multiple times within a single edit session.
+ Adding PTO time
+ Updating your status on a task
+ Adding an agenda item to a meeting

Now, if someone were composing a long message or writing up meeting  
notes in the Notes field, then yes I agree with your analysis. But I  
don't think we're expecting that for Preview.

> Those are the main issues I can think of off the top of my head.  
> Can anyone else think of any other potential problems?
>
> If we can come up with some clever (and bulletproof) solutions to  
> all of them, I think it would actually be a feature worth working on.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> Matthew
>
>
> Matthew Eernisse wrote:
>> Mimi,
>> There are both technical and design-philosophy reasons that would  
>> make implementing something like that potentially problematic in a  
>> Web UI. At this point, I lean very heavily toward not wanting to  
>> go that route.
>> That question gets us into the autosave can of worms (opened by  
>> the idea of implementing edit-in-place on the lozenge) that I  
>> alluded to in the last e-mail. I'll write up a detailed post which  
>> attempts to describe what I see as the issues, and the potential  
>> solutions and their benefits/drawbacks.
>> Thanks.
>> Matthew
>> Mimi Yin wrote:
>>> This is great Matthew. I'm wondering if we can push this even  
>>> further. Is there a technical reason we can't try and 'do the  
>>> right thing' and commit changes to the server whenever users do  
>>> something that would make the detail view either disappear or  
>>> change to display the details of a different item? This would  
>>> basically mean:
>>> + Clicking on a different item in the summary pane
>>> + Switching collections in the collection pulldown
>>> + Logging out
>>> + Leaving the Hub UI altogether
>>> + Closing the browser window
>>>
>>> Mimi
>>>
>>> On May 2, 2007, at 12:08 PM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:
>>>
>>>> After some further thought -- and a bunch of chitchat with  
>>>> Jeremy Epstein that was really helpful -- I see that there's a  
>>>> better solution to the first of the two scenarios that doesn't  
>>>> involve throwing up a dialog at all.
>>>>
>>>> The two scenarios are:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Users click on the lozenge for the same event they are  
>>>> editing in the item detail form
>>>>
>>>> A dialog box is actually not needed here, because the user's  
>>>> intent is clear.
>>>>
>>>> The UI should just do the right thing in that case, and apply  
>>>> edits from the form along with the changes to start and end time  
>>>> caused by moving/resizing the lozenge. (If the changes in the  
>>>> form include a change to start/end, then the move/resize changes  
>>>> would overwrite them.)
>>>>
>>>> 2. Users click on the lozenge for a different event.
>>>>
>>>> Here we still need the dialog to ask users if they want to apply  
>>>> changes, discard changes, or cancel the change of selection to  
>>>> the new event.
>>>>
>>>> This seems to me like a fairly obvious improvement in the case  
>>>> of number 1, so unless there are some objections, I'll take this  
>>>> tack when doing the fix for this bug.
>>>>
>>>> On a related note, in talking about this with both Priscilla  
>>>> (and later Jeremy as well), some interesting questions came up  
>>>> regarding the behavior of saving changes to items in the  
>>>> Chandler Server Web UI. This can of worms was opened up by the  
>>>> question of how to implement edit-in-place for the event title  
>>>> directly on the lozenge. (There's an open bug, no. 7849, for this.)
>>>>
>>>> I'll address that stuff in a separate e-mail to the list.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Matthew.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Matthew Eernisse wrote:
>>>>> I agree that 'Discard' is better. I'd also like to propose a  
>>>>> change to the prompt that makes it clearer why the dialog has  
>>>>> popped up. I propose the following:
>>>>> You have made changes to the currently selected item. Do you  
>>>>> want to save your changes?
>>>>> [Cancel]    [Discard] [Save]
>>>>> I do kind of like the addition of the word 'Changes' in the two  
>>>>> right-hand buttons. (And I'm usually a fan of one-word button  
>>>>> labels.)
>>>>> It makes it totally clear what the choices are, even if the  
>>>>> user doesn't really bother to read the prompt. It also  
>>>>> underlines more clearly the difference between discarding the  
>>>>> changes and proceeding, and canceling and going back to the  
>>>>> state you were in before.
>>>>> I do however think the button labels are perfectly usable as-is.
>>>>> Matthew
>>>>> Priscilla Chung wrote:
>>>>>> Last call…? -Priscilla
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Apr 24, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Priscilla Chung wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If people don't feel strongly about the proposed buttons,  
>>>>>>> then let's finalize a decision on this proposal. ---
>>>>>>> Save changes?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [Cancel]     [Discard] [Save]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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