Welcome to Meta Monday, a forum where I like to complain about some of my least favorite Daily Kos trends and functions.
Today's edition will be something for DK4's Cranky Users, where I focus on one of my newest and greatest enemies on this website to date: The DK4 Save & Preview Button!
You remember back in DK3 when you were working hard on a long, substantive diary full of well-researched news stories and supporting links? Seems so long ago, doesn't it? Well, in case you've forgotten or signed up on Daily Kos after the transition, DK3 used to have an autosave function for your diaries that would automatically keep your diary intact after you edited it. You could press the old Save Diary button just to be safe, but if you edited your diary and waited maybe 20 seconds, then the button would just disappear -- and you know why? Because it autosaved for you!
Now, that autosave function is gone. And take a look at who dropped in its place:
What on earth is that? It's like the old Save Diary and Preview Diary buttons from DK3 had a technological romance, spawning a cybernetic love child. Well let me tell you something, brother: If I were at the Save Button's and Preview Button's wedding, I would have objected to their holy matrimony. Loudly.
That love child you see up there is DK4 Save & Preview, heretofore referred as DK4SAP. You know him well. Ever since DK3 died and its younger sibling rose from its ashes, DK4SAP has forced you to constantly monitor your progress on a diary while you write it. If you want to save your diary, you have to push that button before you can close the browser or window in which you're writing. If you close the browser without hitting DK4SAP, then any unsaved progress is lost.
I don't know about you, but for me, DK4SAP has been a completely unnecessary and aggravating change from DK3. For one thing, the preview function has given me a fair amount of trouble with processing speed. Usually it doesn't take that long for the preview to kick in after pushing the button (maybe a second or two), but more time you spend between pressing DK4SAP, the longer the preview takes to work. When I'm working on a diary that has a lot of links or a hefty amount of pictures (which consume more memory), then sometimes the preview doesn't work for about 10-15 seconds -- and that's saying something, considering that I have a pretty fast processor at home.
So before I can even save what I've written, I may have to just sit there and let the computer process the information before I can start writing anything else. That isn't the end of the world, but it's annoying, and if the process is slow and your diary is long, then you may end up wasting a lot of time just waiting for the system to sort itself out. DK3 wasn't always the fastest at previewing lots of pictures either, but at least it didn't have the bigger problem that comes with the lack of an autosave, which leads me to my next point.
The most frustrating aspect of DK4SAP is the constant threat of unintentionally closing the DK4 browser or window, or navigating to a new page in the same tab when you meant to open it in a different tab. You know how when you're writing a diary, but you want to keep a pulse on what other people are saying in other diaries, you decide to open the search function, or open your stream? You better not do that in the same tab as your diary, otherwise you'll lose the whole thing if you didn't press DK4SAP.
Oftentimes when I'm writing a diary, I have multiple Daily Kos tabs open on the same browser. I do that because if I'm planning on linking to a past diary or front page story, it helps to have convenient access to the search function. I may need several tabs open just to find all the relevant diaries and stories I'm looking for, all while keeping a watchful eye on the diary I'm currently writing. But sometimes, I have to close some of these tabs because of some technical reason or other -- the Flash plugin from multiple pages may crash, the browser may slow up and I want to free up some memory, whatever. If I happen to accidentally close the tab where I'm writing my diary when I meant to close another one, then everything I've written after last hitting DK4SAP is gone. That was not a problem in DK3, at least not when the autosave kicked in (and I never had an issue with that).
I also tend to type pretty fast and type a lot during the day. Sometimes my fingers tend to slip when I'm typing. On some occasions, I like to begin a sentence with the letter W, so I have to capitalize it, just like I did right there. You know what happens when you're typing a sentence whose first letter is W, and instead of shift+W like you meant to, you push CTRL-W? The tab closes! You're sitting there, typing away, feeling all proud of your hard work, then all of a sudden, one slip of the finger.....and BAM! -- your diary is gone. Now you have to start all over again if you never bothered to touch DK4SAP.
Oh, and you know what happens if you're writing a diary, you don't push DK4SAP, your browser crashes for some unexplained reason? You guessed it -- the diary is gone. Whether the diary closes because of an accidental mistake on your part, or because your computer hates you, much gnashing of teeth and four-letter words are sure to follow now. What a cruel twist of fate, all because you didn't religiously push DK4SAP every two seconds to ensure a disaster like that wouldn't happen.
Some of you might liken DK4SAP to working in a word processor like Microsoft Word, where it's a good idea to constantly monitor your document by saving it before you close it, and sometimes it may take a little while for the document to save. But the difference is that in most word processors, the program has a safeguard in that it will at least ask you if you want to save any changes you've made before you close it -- it won't just disappear and forget everything you wrote unless you didn't intend to save it anyway. And in the unlikely event of a computer crash, most versions of Microsoft Word will auto-recover your lost documents so you don't have to worry about starting over again.
But not in DK4 -- oh no, DK4SAP makes sure of that. If you even think of closing your browser for any reason, you better pay close attention to that button unless you want to spend ten minutes cursing and pulling your hair out for losing all of your hard work. For crying out loud, I must have pushed DK4SAP at least 50 times during the writing of this diary just to make absolutely sure I didn't lose it.
The DK3 autosave function needs to come back. I see no good reason that it's gone and several bad reasons to keep DK4SAP around. However, in the absence its glorious return, here are my suggestions:
1. Everything you write in a Daily Kos diary draft, copy and paste it in a word processor. Sure, it's annoying and you probably would rather just keep everything in one window, but at least this way you have a back-up in case the diary window closes.
2. Find a way to enable a safeguard to prevent your browser from closing without your final confirmation. Here's one option for Internet Explorer users.
3. Just give in and push DK4SAP after every sentence. You'll have to be careful that you don't close the wrong window or accidentally hit CTRL-W, but that will still keep your diary saved.
Sure, DK4SAP does what it says it will do -- save and preview. Is it too much to ask the powers that be to separate those two functions? They were fine just as friends in DK3. Why did they have to start a relationship in DK4?