Save warning WTF?



  • I hate this stupid Peoplesoft app we have at work for tracking defects and escalations.  It's not terrible, but one little thing drives me nuts:  The "you forgot to save" popup is backwards. 

    If you click on a link to leave a page without saving first, it says: "You have unsaved data on this page.  Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."  which is the complete opposite of every



  • @campkev said:

    I hate this stupid Peoplesoft app we have at work for tracking defects and escalations.  It's not terrible, but one little thing drives me nuts:  The "you forgot to save" popup is backwards. 

    If you click on a link to leave a page without saving first, it says: "You have unsaved data on this page.  Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."  which is the complete opposite of every

    You have unfinished sentences on this post. Click 'Edit' to change, or [X] to cancel.


  • ,,, other app in the world



  • @campkev said:

    I hate this stupid Peoplesoft app we have at work for tracking defects and escalations.  It's not terrible, but one little thing drives me nuts:  The "you forgot to save" popup is backwards. 

    If you click on a link to leave a page without saving first, it says: "You have unsaved data on this page.  Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."  which is the complete opposite of every

     

    Candlejack strikes agai



  • I remember transitioning to PS8, some very strange quirks (the blinky [i][b]Processing[/b][/i] message vs. status bar). Agree on the backwards cancel, it took me a while to get used to it as well. Kev, you work for...Option-Shift-K?



  • This is not Peoplesoft's fault.  The way the onbeforeunload event handler operates dictates this.  Prior to Mozilla (I think it was Mozilla) introducing this feature, web apps either could not warn about unsaved data or they relied on the onunload event handler, which has been abused by people making pop-ups that you can't close (due to the onunload event handler eating the event and preventing the browser from closing the window).  Due to this abuse, most browsers just ignore onunload nowadays.  onbeforeunload was invented to provide a way to warn a user they had unsaved data.  One of the features is that the programmer can only control part of the text; the boilerplate about "you are navigating away from this page" and the OK and Cancel buttons are enforced.  The other option would have been to say "you are navigating away from this page, click OK to not navigate away or Cancel to continue" which would have been far more retarded sounding.  I agree that the current way is tediously worded, but it seems like the best compromise.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    This is not Peoplesoft's fault. 

    So you don't blame them for using a browser front-end on something which should probably be a fat client, since it sounds like it's an internal (non-internet) system?

    I do like that feature for internet pages which require that kind of functionality.  It just requires a very, very carefully-written message to make the invariant options understandable to 95% of your users.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The other option would have been to say "you are navigating away from this page, click OK to not navigate away or Cancel to continue" which would have been far more retarded sounding. I agree that the current way is tediously worded, but it seems like the best compromise.

    What is so hard about changing

    "You have unsaved data on this page. Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."

    to something like

    "You have unsaved data on this page. You'd prefer to save it before leaving, wouldn't you? Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to discard your changes and continue."

    ??



  • @aliquot said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    The other option would have been to say "you are navigating away from this page, click OK to not navigate away or Cancel to continue" which would have been far more retarded sounding. I agree that the current way is tediously worded, but it seems like the best compromise.

    What is so hard about changing

    "You have unsaved data on this page. Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."

    to something like

    "You have unsaved data on this page. You'd prefer to save it before leaving, wouldn't you? Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to discard your changes and continue."

    ??

    Regardless of the wording, there is one major problem in the dialog.  A "cancel" button is expected to abort the attempted operation, which in this case is navigating away from the page.  There's no way to fix this problem with any text in the dialog.  A "no" button would work better, since it has no preloaded meanng in absence of a question.


  • @aliquot said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    The other option would have been to say "you are navigating away from this page, click OK to not navigate away or Cancel to continue" which would have been far more retarded sounding. I agree that the current way is tediously worded, but it seems like the best compromise.

    What is so hard about changing

    "You have unsaved data on this page. Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to continue."

    to something like

    "You have unsaved data on this page. You'd prefer to save it before leaving, wouldn't you? Click OK to go back and save, or Cancel to discard your changes and continue."

    ??

    Wow, you really fail at reading.  The part of the message about navigating away from the page is not controlled by the programmer, it's boilerplate put there by the browser.



  • Actually, I just tested this on Firefox 3.O.5 by navigating away from an unsaved Gmail draft, and it goes the other way around:

     "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" <-- boilerplate question, the one you actually answer.

    "Your message has not been sent".  <-- Gmail-specified

    "Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the same page."  <-- boilerplate instruction

     

    It seems to make sense to me: press OK if you're sure of the consequences, Cancel if OMGWHATDIDIDO ?

    Of course, your browser may be different, but is PS really running on a browser? (I have no idea whatsoever)



  • @Zecc said:

    Actually, I just tested this on Firefox 3.O.5 by navigating away from an unsaved Gmail draft, and it goes the other way around:

     "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" <-- boilerplate question, the one you actually answer.

    "Your message has not been sent".  <-- Gmail-specified

    "Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the same page."  <-- boilerplate instruction

     

    It seems to make sense to me: press OK if you're sure of the consequences, Cancel if OMGWHATDIDIDO ?

    Of course, your browser may be different, but is PS really running on a browser? (I have no idea whatsoever)

    I don't know about campkev's bug tracking app specifically, but PeopleSoft in general runs out of a browser, yea. You're right about onbeforeunload, it looks like morbius got it backwards:

    This demo: http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/demos/OnBeforeUnloadDemo1.htm

    uses this code:

    window.onbeforeunload = confirmExit;
    function confirmExit()
    {
    return "You have attempted to leave this page. If you have made any changes to the fields without clicking the Save button, your changes will be lost. Are you sure you want to exit this page?";
    }

    which gives this dialog:

    Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?
    You have attempted to leave this page. If you have made any changes to the fields without clicking the Save button, your changes will be lost.
    Are you sure you want to exit this page?
    Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the same page.

    so perhaps campkev's bug tracking app is not using onbeforeunload, but some custom piece of cleverness that was written especially for the purpose of reversing the options. Nice...

    ... BTW morbius, you're right, I did screw up and suggest changes in the boilerplate part. I'd feel bad about it if you hadn't done the same thing in your example ;-)



  • I pesonally think browsers should pop up a dialog like Google Chrome does:

    A dialog with leave this page and stay on this page options.


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