This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can’t speak for other versions.
My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing… because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.
No, recovery didn’t work. We just got a blank file.
I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I’m okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.
First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.
I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t want their documents autosaved, but I’m pretty sure most people would want that.
This isn’t fucking 1993. I shouldn’t have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn’t be lost forever because of it.
Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don’t really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.
Yeah, foss softwares are full of these ‘design flaws’ for some reason. Take for exemple the ‘single click to open files’ that was the default on KDE for so long despite everyone reverting it back to double click.
Says who? I’m still using single click and won’t go back. This is a very different choice than having autosave on by default.
it is and it isn’t
they’re both bad UX, which FOSS is generally pretty bad at, probably because there’s not as much overlap between people who who are really into FOSS and people who are really into UX
linux-centric communities also tend to be plagued by elitism, which i expect stifles a lot of this kind of thing before proper conversations can take root
It is. Single/double click behavior is a matter of preference. Autosave on is a measure to mitigate risk. Very different “UX” choices.
Edit: just adding context that the clicking behavior on executables is defined by another setting on Dolphin.
And single click drastically increases the risk of running some sketchy executable just because you selected it. Every desktop I’ve used doesn’t do that.
It doesn’t, that’s another setting. By default Dolphin asks confirmation before running anything with mouse clicks. Also you can double click just as impulsively as single clicking, so it wouldn’t even be a good safeguard.
Well then, you also have large documents or incriminating photos you may not intend to open.
And defaulting to the preference that most people prefer or are used to is a matter of UX.
Which is why I say they’re both UX decisions.
yet very different - binning them into the same category is not helpful. Single click as default is ok, autosave off as default is probably not.
Auto save is extremely dangerous and should be off by default. Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to. If the user wants to save the file, they’ll tell the computer to save the file. If they don’t tell the computer to save the file, they clearly don’t want the file saved (if they do want it saved and expect the computer to do it for them without being told to, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a computer, sharp objects, or open flames, as they clearly could be a danger to themselves and others).
L take. Computers have always done thousands of things in the background. Autosave does not mean “overwrite the original file”.
which is why my first words to you were “it is and it isn’t”
both are caused by people in the foss space not paying enough attention to ux
increased attention to ux could solve both
personally i think categorising all work solely through the lens of severity is unhelpful
risk mitigation definitely comes before preference, whether you call them both UX or not
or i could argue that an issue 90% of people will run into is a higher priority than one 2% of people will run into
or i could argue than the risk of accidentally opening something you didn’t want to is higher than the risk of losing unsaved work
the reason foss sucks when it comes to ux is this attitude of insisting that ux problems are somehow some “other” category of problem, rather than an engineering constraint that needs to be designed around like every other one
case in point, for some reason you’re still refusing to acknowledge that they’re both ux problems. and if you do, your original reply ceases to even make sense.
First thing I do when using a new Windows computer is turn single click back on. Well, either that or show file extensions.
Single click is fantastic. I don’t understand why anyone would do it differently. Everything on the web is single click. Task bar items are single click. Menu items are single click.
KDE got single click right when Microsoft didn’t.
So why would I not want a single unified experience? I don’t accidently open anything, that is just nonsense.