Cancel or Close a dialog box where settings have changed

Question

Paratext has a number of dialog boxes where clicking OK goes ahead and does an operation, but where there are also tick boxes (check boxes) or other settings which are saved even if you click Cancel.

In many programs, changing any settings would cause the Cancel button to change to Close as a way of indicating to the user that the settings will be saved; I think the user would expect the settings changes to be lost if they pressed a button labelled Cancel.

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Answer 1

wdavidhj,

I’m not sure what operation you are saying that these do. Most of these tick boxes “save” their state regardless of whether or not you actually do the operation.

If I go to schedule a S/R and then cancel that operation I don’t see that the schedule is actually set when I enter again.

The combination tick boxes are actually saved before the process of canceling takes place so I don’t see how those would be problems.

The cancel is to not do the operation, but not to undo the tick.

Comments

anon848905:

I’m not sure what operation you are saying that these do. Most of these tick boxes “save” their state regardless of whether or not you actually do the operation.
…
The combination tick boxes are actually saved before the process of canceling takes place so I don’t see how those would be problems.

Right, that much is clear from my tests. But the user has no way of knowing that the setting is saved as soon as they tick the box: in most other Windows software, any settings you changed by ticking boxes would be lost if you clicked Cancel. I’ve just tried this In MS Word File ➢ Options and in Mozilla Thunderbird’s Options dialog: in both cases the settings change is lost.

(Of course Iam well aware that the Android/iOS standard is for settings to take effect as soon as you choose them, and Firefox for Windows is now like this – BUT, all these contexts have no Cancel button at all, which makes it clear that they work in the “new” way.)

If I go to schedule a S/R and then cancel that operation I don’t see that the schedule is actually set when I enter again.

You don’t see it? I tested it by changing the Schedule, clicking Cancel, then going back to the dialog and checking that the schedule was still set – it was. You can’t see it in the main dailog, but you can if you click Schedule… .

The cancel is to not do the operation, but not to undo the tick.

?? – too many “not”s.

Answer 2

wdavidhj, could you share an example of where clicking an option and then using cancel causes the option to continue to be selected?

Comments

• The Schedule… settings – in the Send/Receive dialog;
• Which projects are selected to be included in S/R – in the same dialog;
• Show Combinations tick box – in both the Character Inventory dialog;
• Show Sequences tick box – in the Punctuation Inventory dialog;
• … and other checking dialogs.
• … and maybe others that I can’t think of now.

Blessings, wdavidhj “if-anyone-can-break-it-I-can” -