Losing the Save Button

December 5th, 2005

I’m no usability of human/computer interaction expert but I had a few thoughts on how user interfaces could perhaps be revamped.

At the moment, you open a file, make changes to it and then you save the file. Probably 99% of the time you edit the document and then you save the file when you’ve finished.

Perhaps working with computer files should be more like working on a piece of paper or a canvas. If you make a change, the file is changed. There is no concept of having an actual file, and another copy in memory. If you made some changes to a file during your session, use the undo button. The final state of the document when the application is closed is what state the document will be when you next open it. Similarly with a piece of paper, if you want to remove a paragraph you’ve written, you need to go tip-ex it out.

It’d be also really nice to have built in version control in a file system. Someone has put their home directory in subversion.

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Comments(2)

2 Responses to “Losing the Save Button”

# Aktlauson 06 Dec 2005 at 4:42 pm

I actually like this idea, but I need some clarifications on a few points:
1. Do you want to remove the save button completely and make the program save the document automaticly when you close it?
2. Do you want to keep the save button which allows you to save when you work, but also let the program save the document automaticly when you close it.
If you meant the first option I disagree and would not use a program like it, actually I wouldn’t dear. Imagine writing a document and you application crash. If you as I save frequently this shouldn’t be that big a problem, but if you can only save by exiting the application then you might be in big trouble.

My suggestion is to make a settings in your preference where you could choose default exit options:
- Save edited documents automaticly when leaving.
- Prompt a save option.
- Do not save when leaving.
# Khloon 06 Dec 2005 at 6:31 pm

The idea is as soon as you have made the change to the document, it’s saved. Ideally the document in memory will always be identical to that on the magnetic hard drive. Of course it’s not going to be practical to save whenever the user makes one small change so the program would probably save a copy every few minutes and whenever the program is closed.