[Design] Edits and saving in the Web UI

[Matthew Eernisse]

Mimi,

Good questions, all. Responses below.

Mimi Yin wrote:
> 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". 

Ah, good. I'm glad we're not talking about some kind of background-save 
process.

But in trying to imagine how the auto-save described above would work, 
it seems to me that we are trying to gloss over something in the process 
that has huge significance -- the time it takes to save the data. In 
trying to hide it, we're going to create an app that feels horribly pokey.

The best way to make a Web UI feel snappy is to give the user immediate 
feedback when they take some kind of action. In the case of clicking on 
an event lozenge, the user's intent is to *select a new event.* They 
click on the lozenge, and boom, it's there. Right now all that is 
instantaneous, and the app feels nice and snappy.

If we were to implement that kind of auto-save, then sometimes clicking 
on a new event would give you selection of the new event 
instantaneously, and sometimes (if there have been changes) there would 
be a really ponderous waiting process while the *previously selected 
event* goes into a processing state, and the app does it's 
chug-chug-chug talking to the server, before the new event is finally 
selected. That's not going to feel snappy, it's going to feel really slow.

> Well, I think the problem we're facing right now is that we fear users 
> won't remember to save at all.

I can see that being a genuine concern. There is a very simple step we 
can take to avoid that -- prompting users about unsaved changes when 
needed. That's standard practice in Web UIs.

Anyone who has worked with a Web app for any amount of time generally 
understands fairly quickly that they need to send their changes to the 
server for them to be saved. It's a really relevant fact of the end-user 
experience with a Web app, and I don't think it's something we really 
can, or should try, to hide from them.

> 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.

That makes good sense. I understand there are different targeted 
use-cases for Preview.

However, whether it's just for Preview, or for the longer-term when we 
anticipate there being people doing the majority of their work in the 
Web UI, I feel very strongly that we should let the Web app be a Web 
app, and leverage existing Web conventions unless there's some big value 
in throwing them out.


Matthew