Re: [etoys-notify] [JIRA] Created: (SQ-1144) When exiting Etoys, you should be asked if you want to save your work

On Saturday 22 Dec 2012 1:21:17 AM Stephen Thomas wrote:
> When exiting Etoys, you should be asked if you want to save your work
Is this step really necessary? I realize it is very frustrating when someone
presses the exit button and loses hours of work, but that is better handled by
disabling Exit button until changes are either saved or rolled back. Why have
an active Exit button when it is unsafe?

Regards .. Subbu
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On 2012-12-23, at 06:58, "K. K. Subramaniam" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Saturday 22 Dec 2012 1:21:17 AM Stephen Thomas wrote:
>> When exiting Etoys, you should be asked if you want to save your work
> Is this step really necessary? I realize it is very frustrating when someone
> presses the exit button and loses hours of work, but that is better handled by
> disabling Exit button until changes are either saved or rolled back. Why have
> an active Exit button when it is unsafe?


Because Etoys can't tell when it is safe to exit.

Playing with an Etoys project modifies it. There is no distinction between "authoring time" and "run time". We had to disable auto-save (which we had on the XO for a while) because this messes up good projects.

It is really up to the user to say when a project is in a good state to save.

We have the quit dialog there to not accidentally lose work. There used to be a "save" option in there, but what if you have more than one project that needs saving? The user might assume all projects she made get saved. But it was only the current one. So we removed all magic, and the user can feel confident that the project gets saved if, and only if, she presses the save button.

We might revisit automatic saving, but this will only work if there is a simple and perfect versioning mechanism. Auto-saving is great only if you can get at previous versions easily.  Ours was imperfect so for the time being, explicit saving is the better trade off.

- Bert -


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Hi,
I agree with Bert, "explicit saving is the better trade off". This buffers young and beginning learners and prevents accidental loss.  Eye/hand control is still developing with young children and there are already challenges using Etoys very small up/down arrows in script tiles. There are plenty of frustrations for learners without them experiencing the total loss of their work with an accidental click.
Regards,
Kathleen
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From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] on behalf of Bert Freudenberg [[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2012 6:27 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [etoys-dev] [etoys-notify] [JIRA] Created: (SQ-1144) When  exiting Etoys, you should be asked if you want to save your work

On 2012-12-23, at 06:58, "K. K. Subramaniam" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Saturday 22 Dec 2012 1:21:17 AM Stephen Thomas wrote:
>> When exiting Etoys, you should be asked if you want to save your work
> Is this step really necessary? I realize it is very frustrating when someone
> presses the exit button and loses hours of work, but that is better handled by
> disabling Exit button until changes are either saved or rolled back. Why have
> an active Exit button when it is unsafe?


Because Etoys can't tell when it is safe to exit.

Playing with an Etoys project modifies it. There is no distinction between "authoring time" and "run time". We had to disable auto-save (which we had on the XO for a while) because this messes up good projects.

It is really up to the user to say when a project is in a good state to save.

We have the quit dialog there to not accidentally lose work. There used to be a "save" option in there, but what if you have more than one project that needs saving? The user might assume all projects she made get saved. But it was only the current one. So we removed all magic, and the user can feel confident that the project gets saved if, and only if, she presses the save button.

We might revisit automatic saving, but this will only work if there is a simple and perfect versioning mechanism. Auto-saving is great only if you can get at previous versions easily.  Ours was imperfect so for the time being, explicit saving is the better trade off.

- Bert -


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Kathleen wrote :
>> I agree with Bert, "explicit saving is the better trade off".

This is a great feature request, though Bert's and Kathleen's
conclusion seems right to me.

We should bear in mind that unless we implement Steve's request, Etoys
defies the Sugar UI guidelines (IMHO.)

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/The_Journal

Eventually, it would be nice for learners if Sugar and Etoys 'keep'
behaviours were harmonized. One possibility might be to treat each
project as a separate Activity, though I won't post that as a feature
request, as I haven't thought it through, and I suspect it invites
large challenges both for engineering and for usability.

David
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