>In a reaction to the question whether to use or not to use explicit save strategies,
>i think we should take a look at the users world.
>
>Alan Cooper has written a very interesting book "ABOUT FACE" which was a real eye-opener to me. The main message was: DON'T LET THE USERS PAY. In this book he declared that programmers are very different from users and don't even know it.
>
>COOPER SAYS
>Don't use explicit save modes: the following example:
>
>A (beginning) user is making changes in a document (could be a table). When he's (or she's) finished, the user closes the document. Then the program aks the user if he wants to save the document or not. The user thinks WHAT THE HELL IS THIS ??? Why is the program asking me this. If i didn't want to save the changes i would have undo them before i closed the document (in the real world, Users don't write letters put them in envelopes and after that decide if they want to send them or not).
>
>a second argument not to use explicit save modes: If you prompt dialog boxes for every time there is something to save, the user don't read this messages anymore and presses ENTER or ESCAPE when he sees a dialog box. When a real important messagebox is showing the users will instinctivly press enter or escape without reading the messages.
>
>In my programs i use implicit saving. Every time the user makes changes they are saved at certain points. If the user don't want to save the changes they must explicitly undo them.
>
>Another thing which is real popular, are the messages "Are u sure, you want to close the program ?" Yes of course i'm sure, i would not have pressed ALT+F4 if i didn't want to close this program.
>
>Much of the thing we program seem so natural to us as a developer, but are really inherrited by older programming strategies which should not be used anymore. It is time to make our programs easy to use without hundreds of dialog boxes which only confuses users, let make them mistakes, and reduces productivity.
>
>I think this book by ALAN COOPER is a real MUST for developpers who want to lear more about User Interfaces, develop strategies etc.


One thing I haven't seen discussed is the use of explicit Edit mode. If you are using explicit edit mode (user must enter edit mode by pressing button, etc. before any keystrokes are accepted) then implicit save mode is fine. If you are using implicit edit then there seems to be a place for explicit save. To use Cooper's example above, if I amm a new user and accidently hit some keys on my keyboard (messy desk, big fingers or whatever) and then try to go to the next record and the program saves the bad keystrokes without askig me I am going to say "what's wrong here? How come it didn't ask me before ruining my data?" This is a normal situation as users quite often will bring a customer or other record up on the screen and leave it there for an indefinite period.

I know there are arguments for and against allowing data entry unless specifically asked. For many reasons including Standard Interface type things, I use implicit edit and explicit save. Others might design a different interface.

The point is that somehow the integrity of the data must be ensured, either by protecting against accidental entry (Edit mode) or confirming changes before saving them. I don't know how many times I have been thankful for a "Do you really want ....?" type message. It has saved me many hours of frustration.