Exit without saving. grrrr

[Ghost42]

Rather annoying that you can exit without saving.
I know it's my fault but something to look out for.
Surveyor to 'Drive Session', exit without saving exits the drive session and session. Work gone.
My brain will have to train itself to concentrate!

 

[Forester1]

Thanks for the head's up! It is always tempting to try a drive after working on a route, so I will be extra vigilant to go back to surveyor and save the route before exiting!

 

[rhban]

Still, not saving is better than pressing the Delete button which is right next to Edit Route. I only did it once, but...

 

[frogpipe]

Still, not saving is better than pressing the Delete button which is right next to Edit Route. I only did it once, but...

No confirmation box? Srsy?

 

[stagecoach]

I always do a save before I go into driver mode and never save the session on exit.

 

[JCitron]

Still, not saving is better than pressing the Delete button which is right next to Edit Route. I only did it once, but...

I have too! There's that sinking feeling of dread that comes over us once we click on the wrong thing. Way back in the early days of the new interface, when TRS19 came out and was still in beta, I made a point to ask if the delete button could be moved away from edit. Unfortunately, that all fell on deaf ears as usual then the inevitable happened.

 

[frogpipe]

UI designers are among the most inflexible... people I've ever dealt with. They have a vision and thou shalt not soil it with either logic or facts.

(I'm speaking broadly here, I don't know any trainz devs)

 

[Ghost42]

I've decided CTRL S is my best friend, no limit on use when in edit mode.

 

[JCitron]

We've all made brain fart moves like this confirmation boxes or not. I've actually stared at the save confirmation box when I've seen it and hit cancel after working on my route for many hours! When I did that, I felt that eerie feeling of "Oh no! you dumb a--, you forgot to save!" come over me. It doesn't help when we get interrupted constantly when trying to do something as happens in my house with phone calls or others needing help with something. It doesn't help either with Session editing mode looking exactly the same as the Route editing mode in Surveyor. This is usually the time when we err on the safe side and don't save and lose things but yeah, the brain fart is the worst.

Not getting the are you sure you want to save first message usually occurs if you've saved already. Hopefully you didn't save the route or session under a new version.

 

[frogpipe]

My work flow is save before driving, and never save after driving. Quit out to the menu, and reenter surveyor from there to continue editing.

There are exceptions, like "oh im driving thru that tree branch, let me nudge the tree over a bit" - but then Im extra cautious.

Still mistakes get made. Backup and backup often.

 

[JCitron]

That's how I work as well, well mostly. Being able to go into Driver on the fly to test signals and crossing setups is the cool beans though but I never save while in the driver part and only do so after exiting back to Surveyor, although... it's here where I've made the brain-fart and hit escaped and quit back to the menu and not saved instead of using the tools menu to return to Surveyor! DOH!

 

[martinvk]

Whenever there is a choice in a dialog box, it's time to sit on my hands and understand why. Just blindly clicking because you're in a hurry or feel nothing bad could happen is asking for trouble and then when it happens, be sure to blame others.

 

[1611mac]

So in other words.. don't treat "Save", "Don't Save" dialogs the same as checking off "I have read the software user agreement and.... "

 

[JCitron]

We're all guilty of clicking without reading and this got me thinking...While this is a bit of a segue into some other world, which I'm famous for, it's also pertinent to the conversation. Read the dialog boxes!

Back in the 1990s, I worked for a small consulting firm. The owner had his customer database in ACT! (Does anyone else remember that?). Using some filesharing and other techniques, we were able to set up a multiuser environment with some help from the software developer. It took some tweaks, a bit of bailing wire, and a dedicated PC running Windows 95 (Yes, I know).

The system worked quite well until a newbie sales guy showed up. Unlike a real multiuser database, everyone had access to the administrative and maintenance tools. This newbie was warned not to touch certain menus and do certain things and only stay in the Contacts screen. He didn't listen and clicked on the:

Are you sure you want to delete the database "Company name here"? (I hid the real name...)

He clicked on YES without a glance and with a blink of an eye, the owner's full contact database went off to bit heaven in a flash!

POOF! Gone!

By this time, I had moved on to greener pastures and I got a panic call with an offer of some extra cash to come in and restore the data. Since I worked close by, I took a trip out there during my lunchtime and restored the database from the last backup. I had set up a backup schedule for the owner to ensure there were backups and I was able to get him up and running in a few minutes after I arrived. The cash plus a free dinner were very welcome. ;-)

Without letting a bad deed go unrewarded, my brother who worked there at the time in the graphics department did some creative imagery and the newbie found a new desktop image on his PC when he arrived the next morning. On the screen was:

Are you sure you want to delete Andy's database? with a cursor right on the Yes button. Andy was the owner of the company. ;-)

 

[martinvk]

So did newbie stay learn his lesson employed there?

 

[JCitron]

So did newbie stay learn his lesson employed there?

Nope. He messed up something else, not system related, and was terminated shortly afterwards from what I heard.

 

[Forester1]

I got caught one time with the classic UNIX rm -r *, which recursively deletes the current directory and all subdirectories. It was the right command for what I wanted, but I failed to notice I was one directory higher than I should have been and deleted a lot more than I had intended. After a moment of sheer panic, I remembered that we had several servers with the same configuration, so I was able to copy the needed directories back from a different server. Whew!

 

[JCitron]

I got caught one time with the classic UNIX rm -r *, which recursively deletes the current directory and all subdirectories. It was the right command for what I wanted, but I failed to notice I was one directory higher than I should have been and deleted a lot more than I had intended. After a moment of sheer panic, I remembered that we had several servers with the same configuration, so I was able to copy the needed directories back from a different server. Whew!

That one caught me too! I recovered from a recent backup tar ball and had to un-tar the directory back in. I'm so glad we were diligent about backups. What's worse is we stare right at what we're typing then that feeling of dread that follows afterwards.

 

[WildWillyWacko]

UI designers are among the most inflexible... people I've ever dealt with. They have a vision and thou shalt not soil it with either logic or facts.

(I'm speaking broadly here, I don't know any trainz devs)

Here, here and Tony thinks it is so easy to just make changes in surveyor mode and not accidently hose-up ones original session!

I kind of got that reply when I begged them to reinstate the " Edit Trains " feature that used to be in driver mode.

Really, why should we drivers have to go to Surveyor when one could quickly and safely fix a minor problem like replace a tender when I accidently break a coupler or click and drag a train back that has passed a signal by a few feet when AI causes a traffic jam?

Wild Willy the Wacko

 

[JCitron]

Here, here and Tony thinks it is so easy to just make changes in surveyor mode and not accidently hose-up ones original session!

I kind of got that reply when I begged them to reinstate the " Edit Trains " feature that used to be in driver mode.

Really, why should we drivers have to go to Surveyor when one could quickly and safely fix a minor problem like replace a tender when I accidently break a coupler or click and drag a train back that has passed a signal by a few feet when AI causes a traffic jam?

Wild Willy the Wacko

Interface designers... Grrr. I think they suffer from a bit of artistic arrogance because they never use what they've designed. I have literally fought with interface designers for years over stupid things that would help with workflow. Every time I brought up something about the awkward steps we had to go through, and I was on the testing team, I was met with all kinds of push back and nothing was fixed.

I worked with a business system where the various windows would end up behind each other if the main window was clicked instead of locking the windows that were opened to prevent them from hiding. This caused the user to think the database was locked and they would reboot requiring me to stop what I was doing to unlock their records. After many years of this, I had to use the program myself since there was a workforce reduction. It was then I saw what the issue was and I recovered from the problem by clicking on the window that had slipped behind the main window. I was lucky that I saw the one I needed sneakily peeking out from the edge of the main screen.