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Is the Save Button Obsolete?
Luther Blissett asks: "I've wondered this for awhile now: why do we still have a Save button? Why isn't it always automatic? Why isn't 'Save As' called 'Name and File'? I understand that in ancient history, when Save was a hit on system resources (e.g. when saving to your 5.25 inch floppy disk), we might give control to the user. Also, the average user then was probably more technically adept (out of necessity) and knew the difference between RAM and storage. But now? Why?"
Since day one, "SAVE" has been obsolete along with a myriad of abstractions offered end users (what the heck is the notion of a "FILE" menu anyway? -- What the heck is the notion of "FILE"? I know I've read every beginner's book about getting familiar with computers, and they always go into excruciatingly dull detail about the file abstraction (it's a collection of bytes the comprise a document, blah, blah, blah.)). Users don't care what a file is, they don't want to know what a file is, they just want to do work.
(I will admit caution when absolving users of any responsibility to learn, but generally speaking, end users have enough on their plate without having to incorporate geek-speak to do their work.)
I was in a design meeting one day discussing the appropriateness of the "FILE" menu for the application we were delivering. One of the anointed Golden Boys of the team had sketched the layout and included the "FILE" menu. I asked why we needed it, there was NO notion of "FILE" in our application, there was no notion of "SAVE FILE", etc. in our application.
He said, "cuz they expect it, it's a standard menu." I said, "standard cuz they expect it, or standard cuz it's always been there?" I finally gave up on the chicken and egg discussion, let it be resolved the end users "expect" "FILE" (NOT!).
That said, I could (and may) go through the menu selections in virtually any application and find half of the "options" are abstractions that have bubbled up either historically, or were just never "translated" for end userdom. It's a mess, and it's a presentation piece of software I am constantly explaining, and apologizing for.
It's toothpaste out of the tube, I wish it could go back in. But, it's a great lesson in humility when you actually take a lay-step back and actually try to interpret what we see as normal-speak on a daily basis. It isn't normal, and it isn't transparent.
Short answer to the poster's question: yes
Most of the crap we throw the users' way is artifact crap that never went away. (Does anyone know or remember the story about cutting away 1/3 or the Thanksgiving Ham when preparing it for Thanksgiving Dinner?)
Mainly it is not obsolete because you don't want to make a major mistake, save it and be unable to undo that mistake.
Erutangis ym si siht.
I open up files all the time tofiddle with some numbers without affecting the actual file. My bosses come up to me with little questions all the time - I just open the file with the data, do some minor manipulations, give them their answer and then close it. I care to retain that information.
Then again, I could have wildly misunderstood the question - wouldn't be the first time.
Every day I work with word docs that are 30+ megs in size. All of our saving is done on network shares across a WAN link. Depending on network traffic, a normal save can stall the system for a quite a bit. Something tells me that if a few hundred engineers were constantly sending save data across that link, things wouldn't be looking so good. So, it is still very much a hit to system resources.
Also, as far as the auto save feature goes, I don't want it to. Ever opened a MS Office file (doc, ppt, xls, etc), go to close it without touching a single thing, and it asks you to save? Not to mention that when you work with baselined documents, if they ever change it has to be sent off for approval, resubmitted to higher ups, etc. If the modified date shows anything other than the baselined date, ruh roh. No thanks on the auto save.
Jesus & Satan were constantly getting into arguments about who is better on the computer. Finally, God gets tired of the bickering, and offers to have a contest to see who can use the computer better.
The day of the contest comes, and both Jesus and Satan begin working as quickly as they can. Hours pass, with both of them creating many spreadsheets, documents and databases. About 5 minutes before the contest ends, all of the power goes off, then comes back on after a few seconds.
Satan starts cursing at the computer, and how he just lost everything he had been working on. Jesus calmly just restarts the computer, and finishes what he was working on. Satan sees this, and starts complaining to God about how Jesus must be cheating.
God replies to Satan, "Jesus saves".
If you do away with the concept of 'files', the operating system then has to handle every possible type of document. You wouldn't have had the MP3 revolution because there would be no such thing as an 'MP3' since the OS didn't support it. You also wouldn't be able to organize data in directories, like having all of a game's data in one directory. Grand Theft Auto would have it's application wherever applications are, sounds wherever sounds are kept, textures wherever pictures are kept, movies wherever they are kept, settings files wherever they are kept, and their proprietary data files wherever they are kept, if the OS even allows it because it knows the type of file and where it should go. Then you could be scanning your pictures one day and see a texture not knowing what it is and delete it, then you can't play the game anymore.
And how exactly is 'save' obsolete? How often are you going to write the file to the disk? Every 10 minutes? Every 1 minute? Every keystroke? I would argue that having a 'save' button or menu item is the best way to handle this. If they close down the application with a modified document, the application can warn them as most applications do. Good luck saving a big spreadsheet every keystroke with OO when a save can take minutes. I don't think you'd get much work done. What if you want to just play around? Do you want to have to create a copy of the 'document' before opening it if you want to make changes you may not want to keep? It's also inefficient to save every keystroke when you may be making a lot of changes before saving.
The notion of a 'FILE' menu is there because applications work with FILES. If you have an application that doesn't work with FILES then don't use a file menu.
The answer to that concern is that change logging versioning and branching have to become an integral system service. In such a case there'd be a subtle differnce between naming a version and saving, but it'd be there.
1. You create your document "Great Novel".
2. You edit your novel.
3. You shut off your computer.
4. You turn on your computer.
5. You open up "Great Novel" and it takes you where you left off.
6. After editing for three hours, you decide that you really don't want to kill of your hero, so you ask for the document to be rolled back by 50 minutes.
7. You start editing from that point, which automagically creates a document branch.
8. After twenty minutes, you like what you have, and decide to label the version on this branch "best version".
9. You later decide to go back to your abandoned branch, and label it "hero dies".
10. Over the course of months, your version tree becomes extremely bushy. However at any time you can ask for the most recent "best version" or see a history of all versions in which "hero dies".
If I had to say there was a suite of capabilties missing from most applications, it is a comprehensive but easy to use set of logging, versioning and branching capabilities.
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