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> There are lots of guides on website usability, go and find one for yourself.
... some of which should tell you that having an automatically scrolling display right next to something you (supposedly) want people to read, is a bad idea.
A similar annoyance is writing a well-thought out forum post, pressing submit, and being told in some way that your session has expired. Some sites you can go back to retrieve your post, others will just present you with a newly empty form.
I've actually been conditioned so thoroughly by flaky forum software to ctrl-a-c on every post before submit that I don't even think about it and sometimes I'm surprised when I paste later and get whacked with a giant forum post.
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What in the interface tells you that navigating away from the page will not submit the data? Perhaps instead of reset a "do not submit" button is required. But then if I changed my mind about what I'm writing but still want to send a message things get a little lame. How can you tell for example that going back doesn't instead save the comment as a draft (like the SMS interface on my [pretty old] Sony Ericcson phone)…
browsers don't save things by default. that's how they are. the thing in the interface that tells you that you're looking at a browser is up to you... in my mind, the address at the top, starting with http:// is the part of the UI that says my changes will be thrown away... this is kinda why i'm miffed that there is an explicit "throw my changes away" button, when that's the default behaviour
// Depends on your browser.
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I'm assuming this is levelled at HN? It's probably the only forum I use regularly where I get timeout's on submission. And the timeout page isn't even friendly either.
HN (and trac) handle the situation best: they don't invalidate the page data, so your post will still be there. You CTRL/CMD A+C then get back to your posting with a refreshed cookie/session. Many other forums basically wipe out your post, which is highly frustrating.
I don't think I've seen a reset button in a while. Does anyone still use them?
I can see how some naïve users might want the extra-confirmation that they are cancelling this action – but I there's not reason for them to be visually similar and positioned almost next to each other.
A similar annoyance is writing a well-thought out forum post, pressing submit, and being told in some way that your session has expired. Some sites you can go back to retrieve your post, others will just present you with a newly empty form.
I've actually been conditioned so thoroughly by flaky forum software to ctrl-a-c on every post before submit that I don't even think about it and sometimes I'm surprised when I paste later and get whacked with a giant forum post.
Good example of implementing a feature because it's easy to do, rather than because it has real utility. Why it's part of the HTML form spec I don't know. Was it ever useful?
The actual button isn’t particularly useful but the DOM interface is. Firefox (and other browsers?) cache DOM entries in certain situations. This is useful if you refresh the page accidentally with a half completed comment in a text box, but less useful if you’re building a complicated webapp that assumes an initial state. A simple document.forms[0].reset() at the top of your code works wonders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
browsers don't save things by default. that's how they are. the thing in the interface that tells you that you're looking at a browser is up to you... in my mind, the address at the top, starting with http:// is the part of the UI that says my changes will be thrown away... this is kinda why i'm miffed that there is an explicit "throw my changes away" button, when that's the default behaviour
>" browsers don't save things by default. " // Depends on your browser.
keeping it in cache/locally/whatever is not "saving".