"save as" dialog with better clarity

[Salomon]

English User:

The "save as" dialog is quiet nerve-racking for inexperienced Lab View User. This problem is even greater for customers using the German LV Version - reason will be stated later in this text. The typical use of "save as"- functionalty is to save an edited file with new nametag, leaving the Original file unchanged. In order to make the menu more comprehendible it must be clear to the user that no change will be made to his original no matter which option he chooses.

Therefore I propose to expand the dialog by an extra Box, which must be opened to see the second and third option. In closed-Box-form the dialog would look much more compact then the menu right now. In addition it can be seen at first glance, that the first option is the default option to take.

German User:

Für deutsche Benutzer gibts es darüber hinaus ein Bezeichnungsproblem:

"Kopie durch Original ersetzen" -> In diesem Fall ist die Bezeichnung falsch herum. Schließlich beschreibt der Dialog welches VI im Arbeitsspeicher verbleibt. Das ist in diesem Fall aber die Kopie, während das Original unter alten Namen auf der Festplatte verbleibt. -> "Original durch Kopie ersetzen"

Weiteres Problem: Die Wortwahl "ersetzen" veranlasst automatisch zu der Befürchtung das "Kopie" überschrieben wird.

Vorschlag:

Es sollte eine hervorgehobene Funktionalität geben, die sich wie der "normale" (aus z.B. Microsoft-Word bekannte) speichern-unter-Befehl verhält. (Der erste Menü-Punkt) Außerdem sollte die Übersetzung überarbeitet werden um Missverständnisse auszuschließen.

Die Menü-Punkte zwei und drei sollten klar als alternative Auswahlmöglichkeiten erkennbar sein.

[tst]

I use 3 of the 5 options in this dialog on a regular basis. I wouldn't want any of them to be hidden. Also, for inexperienced users, if you hide the options, how are they going to know what their options are? They're basically going to have to show the options to know if those are options that they want to pick.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I'll flag the localization team to make sure they read your comments about German.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Just so that everyone is clear which dialog we're talking about:

For the record: This dialog developed in LV 7.0. In questioning users about how they use Save As, we saw no clear winner among the three options as far as which one was more commonly desired. We present all three options because we have no way of knowing which is the most important to any given user. In fact, the most important thing that we found in LV 7.0 was to make sure that people were aware that there was variety because everyone's idea of what "Save As" should do by default was very different.

> In order to make the menu more comprehendible it must be clear to the

> user that no change will be made to his original no matter which

> option he chooses.

Is this comment about both the English and the German translations? Or only about German? In English the fact that the original is untouched if you use any of the Copy options seems obvious to my reading, but, honestly, I've stared at this dialog so many times both during its development and for years of usage that I'm a poor judge. 🙂 If you have suggestions for changing the English text to add clarity, please post suggestions for the phrasing.

[RamonaL]

Hi Aristos,

this dialog is clear to read, so if the other ones would look like this, I think it would be much easier to understand the different options. (Save as from a project looks different than save as for a single vi):

We have the experience that new users always struggle when they see this Save As dialog.

Expecially in the german version there is way to much text in it. Its more confusing then helping.

So I would prefer a better dialog for that, as it is very often used.

Maybe it would be an idea to have for the first time when opening this dialog a explainion of the different options with a checkmark to deactivate this dialog. So as long as users are not sure about save as, they will see the hints and if they start to be familiar with it they will geht the dialog as shown in the post of Aristios. Would that be an optioin?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Those are both the exact same dialog.

The yellow warning triangles show up only if applicable. The VI that I first posted was a top-level VI with no subVIs, so there were no callers to worry about, and there was no hierarchy to duplicate. Even if you don't have a project, if you Save As on a VI that is a subVI, you'll get the yellow triangles. If you Save As a VI that has subVIs, you'll get the hierarchy option.

[dthor]

Personally I think the save-as dialog is pretty dang good already. It took a bit of getting used to, but now I end up using all 5 different options, based on my needs, and I love it.

I can't say anything about the localized version though, as I'm not fluent in German 

[LV_Warrior]

Though I am slowly getting used to the irregular formulation of the 3 options, there is another thing too: Within a projectn the first option "Close the original" even makes the original disappear from the project browsers vi listing. It looks like it has been deleted, but it is not. No sooner than when you open the project the next time when it is located in an autopopulating folder, the VI with the original name will be in the VI list too.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

paulssoort: Yeah, that's just the autopopulating folders doing *exactly* what they're designed to do. It is not a bug. The Save As gets the file out of your project right then, giving you the time to go to the disk and move the now-disconnected file to some other location. But if you don't go do that, then the autopopulate folders will pick it up in their next scan of the directory, just like they're supposed to do. Yet another reason I recommend against using autopopulating folders. I understand that people want the ease of automagical management of the file system, really, I do, but management of the file system requires some intelligence that no less-than-AI-algorithm is going to get right -- at least, no proposal I've seen comes anywhere close to making it work. Stop using the autopopulating folders and then (the real secret) stop worrying about your disk layout while you're in the middle of development. When you hit end of development, take a moment then to reoganize your files on disk, but, otherwise, just leave the files where they lay, directory wise.

I know -- it isn't ideal by any stretch. I know that. But being honest about labor I have to do seems to me to be better than pretending that I'm happy with cleaning up after the supposed labor-saving device. 🙂

Sorry... this is off topic from the main idea. There are various ideas in the exchange about autopopulating folders. Go explore them or propose some new ones. I'd love someone to solve this, I just haven't seen the solution yet.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 3 kudos within 3 years after posting will be automatically declined.