>I was looking at an application yesterday that was very annoying. Everytime you saved a data change a wait window came up with "Your data has been saved - press any key to continue".
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>It got me thinking "why do we need a save button at all?" When I fill out a physical form I don't have to save it. It is saved by virtue of having filled it out. So why do we require users to 'SAVE'?

How do you know the user hasn't made a mistake and doesn't want to commit his/her changes. Depending on the appraoch you take, they could simply close the form or click on another button to bring back the original data.

A good example would be 2 people using the same program with their data files stored on a network. Now let's assume they both start editing the same record and one saves before the other. In a good program, you can tell the user what the data was originally, what the data has been changed to by the other user, and the what they changed it to, and let them select on a field-by-field basis which values to keep.


>I'd like to think there is an elegant metaphor for intuitively saving data without asking the user to do it.
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>If you look at some of the forms that change settings in Win95 or IE4 etc. You don't have to save. You can cancel, but the boxes you check etc are saved automatically.
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>Does anyone build forms that save data without explicitly having a save button?

If memory serves me correctly, most dialogs in Win95 and IE4 have three buttons on them: OK, Cancel, and Apply. these dialogs do not save the changes you made unless you click on OK or Apply.