Yeah, I understand and agree. There should be a reason to have a warning in one case and not in another where the same thing happens.
Let’s see. One could say that in the case of “File / Save” it is expected that the current file gets overwritten, so no warning is necessary. Same with save prompt on close.
“File /Save As” is often used (in my workflow at least) when the user wants to save under a different name. If I accidentally mistype, using a filename already present, the warning would then be beneficial and useful, I think. If I do want to use a filename already present, the warning would be informative at best and only mildly annoying at worst, contrary to a popup.
I may be wrong about expectations of people when using one or the other save action, but that would be my take on it.
Yes, that all makes sense. I guess in the end the need and appeal of that yellow caution state isn’t really about how important the operation is.
I think the central issue is that the importance of that “save” process changes dynamically and quickly. It is perfectly safe and benign one moment and then you select an existing filename and suddenly it is important. So changing the text and color would signal that change.
But I still don’t like the thought of making some special thing that is only used in one place. But still worth considering. We currently have a “redalert” state we can put on forms and buttons (hardly used), so adding a similar “caution” one isn’t too much of a stretch.
I can relate to that, I don’t like that part of it either. For me personally, the red background is enough and gets my attention fine. But if people are actually losing work, it might be an acceptable compromise.
It’s kind of hard to imagine how that would be meaningful without meaningful commit-messages. And I don’t see those auto-generated.
Anyway, I’m rather on the side of those who’re against an explicit prompt on overwriting an existing file. If people really save their work with their eyes closed, it’s their own fault. Simple as that.
I mean, if you go through the ‘save as’-dialoge to begin with (rather than CTRL+S), there’s good reasons you can be expected to make a concious, deliberate decision about where (and using which filename) you’re about to save your file.
The handling of caches and such is is kind of a different story though (imho).
greetings, Kologe
I am wondering how you see this affecting, for better or worse, team environments. Two main use cases would be teams accessing files over a network and second, linking (referencing) and other cases where user control or even having a resident IT personnel to manage it would be necessary. As in the case of a studio render farm.
I see that for an individual, this “auto save” or whatever you want to call it can be a convenience.
But I can say with emphatic certainty as a person who manages a small team, that a localized personal-best-practice (or lack of) are not in the best interest of the team as a whole.
And would not an auto save paradigm more or less take this control out of the hands of a production manager, technical director or IT?
Or on the other hand, would its very nature be a way to have a universal control over all file saving and thus force the hand of a team best-practice?
The problem is that there is a difference in muscle memory actions with Blender simply for the fact that where your mouse cursor is at the time of playing your muscle macro can royally srew up your result.
[Shift - Ctrl - S] → [Plus] → [Return] – this should save incrementally. All the time. But it doesn’t.
Usually saves incrementally except if the mouse cursor is located in the side bar of the dialog. In which case … it does not save incrementally but makes the sidebar bigger by 10% before overwriting your file
All these discussions about what is dangerous and persistent and whatnot are all fine and good but pure theory. In every day usage the option of a pupoup would be easy and helpful.
I am all against pupoups if they are not necessary. This one is, though!
Another option would be to also just add a “save incrementally” file menue entry and let us bind that to a hotkey. One of my most important hotkey combos in every software that supports it.
