>Hi John!
>
>It seems to me that this is not directly related to a Save Button, but rather a programming oversight. If at some point you have a dirty buffer, even with a save button, it is because the app hasn't checked for it.
>
>>In applications where I have tried to be "bleeding-edge" and not had dedicated save functions, inevitably "dirty" data gets into the tables. Typos, accidental saves, et al. In a perfect world with perfect users....maybe.
I think the "Save" button is one of those situations where it's an easy solution to what could be a very complex problem. In many instances, if you get rid of some of the "standard" ways of doing things, you're setting yourself up for a lot of extra work. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, it just mean that it's something you have to factor into the cost of developing the application, and whether the benefits of it outway the costs.
The "dirty data" is just one example of it. In the situation where the save is automatic, you're going to have to check for a lot more things. Should it check for typos/spelling mistakes? In a perfect world, probably. What about incomplete records? Tag it for later fixing? Who's going to do the inevitable cleaning that will need to be done to clean out "dead" entries (those partial entries that people never got around to finishing or deleting)?
Someone else brought up the very real problem of having to change all your views/cursors/etc to accomodate those "incomplete" entries. The next question would be, where and when do you check for this information? Do you check at the time of entry (which may, by default, negate the possibility of partial/incomplete entries), or at some other "important" point during the process? When, and how will you now do this? Is it even possible without assigning someone the task of doing this part of the file maintenance?
The "simple" removal of just that one button has suddenly made the programmers and designers life much more complex. I guess the important decision to be made is again, does the payoff outway the costs?
