[development] nice read: usability tests for Wikipedia online

[Robert Douglass]

Bèr Kessels wrote:
> Op woensdag 8 maart 2006 20:55, schreef Darrel O'Pry:
>> You know even on my brain dead days I've gone to write a story and
>> decided against it, then started asking myself, 'How do I get out of the
>> node/add/X page?'
> 
> Cancel would bring you to the place where you were before. Very often that is 
> a place you canot reach by another link. It is, in fact an advaced version of 
> a back button. 

Well, it would be possible to keep track of where you were, though it 
would mean passing a parameter around throughout the whole process or 
using the $_SESSION. More reasonably, canceling would send you to your 
account page, or the front page with a message "editing canceled". I'm 
in favor of a cancel button on edit forms. It still has a psychological 
effect on me when I change my mind about editing or creating content, 
and I would like being able to click something that expresses my 
intentions clearly.

Finally, putting a cancel button on the form would give us a chance to 
react to the cancellation. This could be useful:

-- multipage forms that persist some amount of data could do cleanup.
-- the user could be asked if s/he would like to save the content as a 
draft for continuation later
-- as a very advanced feature, we could use AJAX to save any node being 
edited/created to help recover from things like the browser being 
closed, or the internet connection being lost. Cancel would then delete 
this information.