

Delete the Save Button - pyoung
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/microsoft_office_2013_and_the_save_button_come_on_computers_are_smart_enough_to_preserve_everything_i_type_without_me_hitting_a_stupid_disk_icon_.single.html

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alphakappa
There is a behavioral impact to the Save button. We are conditioned to think
that the changes we make in a file do not apply until we hit 'Save', so it's
okay to just close a file if you do not intend to 'commit' those changes.

Auto-save for recovery purposes is one thing, but when completely replacing
the 'Commit when I tell you' to 'Save everything in real time' can have
unintended consequences.

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mwexler
I keep getting caught by this on Google Docs. I whip in, accidentally change
something while scrolling or copying and pasting, then close the doc. Bingo,
I've lost information, sometimes entire paragraphs. What a pain. I should have
the option to persist my changes when and how I want to.

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eipipuz
It's not exactly what you want, but it may help you. Google Docs provides File
> "historical revisions".

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mwexler
Good point, but it's linear. It mixes accidental changes with intentional all
in one stack. I don't want to have to undo good stuff just to get back to the
stuff I lost. Visual stacks, comparison of versions, all of these are
helpful... but at the end of the day, the tool should let me decide what
version and changes I want to persist, and which I don't.

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andyfleming
"Save" -----> "Mark Version"

I think the save button more or less provides a way to save a version or
"mark" one. I don't want to see the button disappear, but rather change into a
"mark version" button that allows auto-saving to happen, but gives the user
the opportunity to set their own points of reference in a document's history.
In software that auto-saves, I often feel a bit disoriented. It makes it
harder to jump back to a certain state of a document.

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Fargren
Jeff Atwood made a similar argument back on 2004:
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/09/do-you-want-to-
save...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/09/do-you-want-to-save.html)

I think autosave has a significant impact on versioning, and while it
certainly has some pros, it's not by any means an absolute improvement.

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damian2000
It actually does an auto-save for you, silently in the background. But there
would be an uproar if they got rid of the save button entirely - people like
to feel in control of their important data.

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Karunamon
Wow, I don't say this very often, but tl;dr. Every single argument made in the
article has been made elsewhere, but more concise. By the end, I was saying
"Yes! I get it already! Enough!"

In summary:

Computers are smart enough to autosave. The save button is an anachronism. We
should think about retiring it.

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grogs
This might make sense in office programs, but I'd hate this for program code
at least.

I think saving should not be needed except when you want to send the file to
someone. Work already creates temp files which autosave? Part of me likes the
idea of saving being option... just making word autorestore without being
prompted. However, that would obviously be a significant, and prohibitively
confusing, change in workflow for users.

Once you save, you've lost the previous version, especially if the program
dies and you lose undo history.

In software development specifically, there's quite few tools that
automatically pickup/use files when they're saved... Meaning you'll try to
compile or use invalid files.

tldr; don't do this. word already guards against losing changes anyway.

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iamwil
If one's going to get rid of the save button, then the program should sure as
well give me feedback about when the last time it's saved. Often times, when I
want to close something that autosaves, I'm not sure if now's a good time or
not.

When it comes to version control, you do actually want to control when a
version is saved, because there's meaning behind the different save points,
conveyed to others that might want to fork and merge. Wading through a history
of meaningless changes is no one's idea of fun, because the intention of the
version isn't conveyed well only through the changeset.

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angrydev
While this article makes some good points about modern design borrowing far
too much from the past, I fail to see how this is a pressing issue in software
today as the author would like me to believe.

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huragok
Why not have auto-save and, almost git-like, have a way to add tags or
branches to points in time where you did something significant to a document?

