Can you add cancel button when it's possible?

[Don Christensen]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Xan wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dijous 17 Juny 2004 00:12, en/na Brian J. Tarricone (<"Brian J. Tarricone" 
>><bjt23 at cornell.edu>>) va escriure:
>>
>>
>>>the settings dialogs use instant-apply, so a cancel setting isn't
>>>applicable.  it would be rather hard to implement, at any rate.  i see
>>>no reason to change the current behavior.  most interfaces are moving
>>>toward the instant-apply model, not away from it.  in fact, i recall
>>>that the gnome HIG says something to the effect that you should make all
>>>settings dialogs instant-apply, if possible.
>>
>>I like instant-apply models. I think that were useful a "revert changes" 
>>button. Useful overall for dialogs to have many options and changing all 
>>options to previous state spend a little time (more than click to a cancel 
>>button ;).
>>
>>I think that this implementation were cheap: only save the actual settings at 
>>the begginning and delete them when ok or close button is clicked.
> 
> 
> ok, i'll be honest here.  you seem to have the most random off-the-wall 
> ideas out of everyone, and yet you appear to have _no idea_ what goes 
> into implementing any of it.  the implementation is _not_ cheap, and 
> it's not trivial.  not only that, but it's not expected behavior.  
> either you have an instant-apply dialog without a cancel button, or you 
> have an ok/cancel/apply-type dialog.  when people see a cancel button, 
> you assume that the settings aren't applied immediately.  period.
> 
> please, will you try to put more thought into your "suggestions"?  at 
> least don't assume that every little option/feature/whatever can be done 
> with zero or little cost.  try writing some code, and you'll understand.
> 
> 	-brian

Playing Devil's advocate here, I think having an "Ok" button sort of
implies "I accept these changes", and not having a "Cancel" button along
side is a little odd.  Changing "Ok" to "Done" would be more clear in
my opinion.

I do personally like the idea of being able to revert the changes I have
made if I go through a dialog and make a bunch of "instant apply" changes
and then decide I made a mistake.  I agree that a "Cancel" button is not
the way to do this, but I would suggest a "Revert" button would be nice.
I have no idea how difficult it would be to code this, so I will leave it
as a feature I wouldn't mind seeing, but then I can easily live without
it as well.

-Don

-- 
Don Christensen       Senior Software Development Engineer
djc at cisco.com         Cisco Systems, Santa Cruz, CA
   "It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."