No "undo" or "cancel" button on property dialogs

[Juanjo Garcia-Ripoll]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-desktop

Summary:

When editing the properites of an object, let it be in Nautilus, Rhythmbox, or any other Gnome application, there is no way to cancel the operation and revert to the original values.

Sometimes this is not a problem, when there's only _one_ edited value and we remember the original value, but in general this causes a lot of trouble to new and experienced users.

Most important it sets the burden on the user to undo any accidental damage or mistake.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a Nautilus window.
2. Right click on a file and enter the properties dialog.
3. Change the file name to some stupid value. Wait one hour until you have forgotten the original value :-)
4. Close the window with either the Ctrl+W shortcut or Close button.

What happens:

The new wrong value is stored, independent on the way we close the window.

What should happen:

The dialog should offer the user a way to undo the change before closing the window. Even if the guideline is to apply instantly these changes, the changes should be reverted unless the user confirms them.

Related bugs:

The same problem appears in Rhythmbox when editing the properties of a song.

Linux release: Ubuntu 6.10 with latest updates

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Yes, I find this annoying as well. At present users are not allowed to do mistakes ! :-/
A "user friendly" OS should be a "fault tolerant" OS, since users are just fallible human beings... and Ubuntu aims at Human beings, he he he... ;-)

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This is a bug in nautilus et al (quite possibly separately in each application - Seb?) rather than in ubuntu-desktop. Reassigning.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 109170 and is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any information missing that you can add. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find. Would be nice if you may open another report for the one in rhythmbox so we can track it better, thanks in advance.