GUI design: combine Save and Save As, any ideas?
I am working on a GUI (OpenG Builder) and want to combine a Save and Save As button into one button. Does anyone have an idea how to accomplish such an act?
My thoughts go to the "hot spot" for "save as" on the right side of the button indicated by the symbol.
Any other GUI ideas or screenshots implementing such a feature in an intuitive way?
I am not looking for an ActiveX / .NET implementation. A description or screenshot will suffice.
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I think it's backwards. "Save" is a frequent operation and absolutely necessary for a normal workflow. Jesus saves ! Access to "Save" should be as easy as possible. Save As, on the other hand, is rarely used and requires additional user interaction.
The combination of Sav and Save As is a kind of solution that appeals to us programmers - it is logical, clean and not user-friendly.
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How about a Save button with a dropdown menu attached to it, similar to how the old Back button was used to work in web browsers where you could either click Back to go back one page or click the arrow. to go back a few pages. Clicking the "Save" button will simply save by clicking the arrow, bringing up options ("Save", "Save As", etc.).
My concern with merging these functions would be that Save is a (potentially) destructive operation and save as is a (potentially) non-destructive operation. It would be a Bad Thing for the user to accidentally click on the wrong spot and perform a destructive operation when they tried to perform a non-destructive effect.
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I agree with other posters that this is not really a good idea. However, if you do this, I think the easiest way is to simply have the Save button always act as the Save As ... button (ie, always open the File dialog). The dialog box should indicate that the file and location were saved last, so for the average user just click Save, then OK, and then Yes to the question "do you want to overwrite ...".
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Scott has posted basically what I was going to say, so I'll just add an observation accordingly. IrfanView, the popular image viewer for Windows, goes to great lengths to make Save more difficult than Save As. The toolbar button with the generic Save icon actually performs the Save As function. The toolbar doesn't even have a button that performs standard save.
I assume the author designed it this way because doing Save on an image in a potentially unprofitable format can be destructive. As with the program, users are more likely to use Save As instead. It is sometimes annoying when you want to Save, but the security based approach helped me several times.
In other words, don't combine Save and Save As. If anything, they should be as clear as possible to prevent costly false clicks.
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