SaveandCanceland

I start things a lot and then cancel them. Or not, as it happens, because apparently, just like I lived in the same house for more than 15 years and still banged my shins on the dishwasher, I cancel out of email messages on my iPhone on a daily basis, and still, every time, suffer confusion about the resulting dialog, which reads "Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel". Often I stare at it suspiciously, remembering that there is a horrible trick here that leads to aggravation, and carefully work out that the right button is "Don't Save". But about half the time, I confidently press "Cancel". On good days, my heart instantly sinks as I remember that nooo, it's a trap! But on bad days, I stare at my message in disbelief. How can I be here, looking at the same message? I just told it to cancel, not once but twice! Oh wait, right, that second one canceled the first one. In order to cancel the message, you must press any button that does NOT say "Cancel".

Similarly, every week I fill out my time card. On the first screen, I select my name, from a menu that contains one item, my name. (You might think that it would be the default, seeing as it's the only possible choice. But no.) I then select the week from a menu that contains a number of weeks, including weeks for which I have already been paid. There's no default on that menu, either, even though at any time there is one and only one most recent week with no edited time card. Then I enter my hours for each day, and pick a button. I could pick "Save" or "Next". Inevitably, I pick "Save". You have by now realized that the right answer is "Next". Why? Because "Save" means "Save and exit", and requires me to go through the whole process of selecting myself and the week before I can return to the screen and press "Next". Whereas "Next" means "Save and go to next step" and allows me to submit the time card. I know this by now. Still, years and years of computer experience cause me to want to save my work before I move on.

Furthermore, I use two different wikis, xwiki and twiki. Each one, in editing mode, has two save buttons, one of which is labelled "Save and Continue". In xwiki, that means "Save and Continue Editing". In twiki, that means "Save and Exit Editing Mode". As it happens, I hardly ever get them wrong in either one. In xwiki the labels are unambiguous, there's "Save & Continue" and "Save & View". In twiki there's "Save and Continue" and "Save", and it so happens that the first thing I press when I want to do what I think of as "Save and Continue" is actually a button labelled "Save". Then when I want to exit, no button sucks me in, and eventually I sulkily press "Save and Continue" while muttering "I don't want to continue, I wish to cease doing what I am doing."