Hi everyone,
With the auto-save that comes with realtime editing, the Cancel button has become more or less useless. Most of the time it simply takes you back to view mode without discarding anything (because the changes were already auto-saved). So I’m wondering if we still need a Cancel button when editing in realtime, and if we do, what should be its behavior (what useful action can it perform).
Let’s see what options we have:
- Remove / hide the Cancel button. If a user wants to discard recent changes they will have to:
- either do it manually (tedious)
- or use the Undo/Redo feature from the editor, but note that this will revert the changes from other users as well (and it doesn’t work if remote changes keep coming)
- or rely on the document history, identifying the version before the realtime session started, but reverting will include changes from other users that were editing at the same time and also revisions created outside the realtime editing session
- Change the name and behavior of the Cancel button to discard all the changes done since the realtime session started (by storing the document version number before the realtime session started), but:
- this includes changes from multiple users
- this also includes changes done outside the realtime session, while the realtime editing was in progress
- Add support for using a draft, Realtime: Auto-save original document vs. a draft , in which case we can provide an action to discard the draft. It would discard changes done by other users as well, but at least it won’t include revisions done outside the realtime editing session.
I don’t see a viable way to make the Cancel button discard only the changes done by the current user. The only improvement in this area would be to add support for per-user Undo/Redo history in the editor Loading..., but it’s not going to be easy (hopefully the new WYSIWYG editor supports this).
WDYT?
Thanks,
Marius