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I'm afraid to click buttons in mobile apps and web pages now. At one point, there was a standardized method, known as "Undo", to assure the user that the change

I'm afraid to click buttons in mobile apps and web pages now. At one point, there was a standardized method, known as "Undo", to assure the user that the changes they're making can be reverted, but at some point along the way we ditched that concept. It's especially worse on mobile where tooltips don't exist, and I have to just have to tap randomly on an icon that looks vaguely like what I want, and pray that I'm doing the right thing. If I'm lucky, there will be a limited-time Undo button after doing the action (GMail has this on some actions but not others!), but if I hesitate too long or accidentally click on anything but it, it goes away permanently. I'm sure I've lost some important email to the depth of time because of a few fatfinger mistaps.

mattmcknight 8y ago
The other thing missing in mobile is the hover event which would bring up a tooltip. Maybe future advanced screens will recognize a literal hover over the button as a trigger for a tooltip, or we'll get an annotate mode for the icons.
- cpu 8y ago
  Sometimes you get lucky and the tooltip works on Android (tap and hold), but in my experience not terribly many apps support this.
- systoll 8y ago
  I feel like 3D touch is all the hardware you need... it just isn't used that way. A 'peek' already provides a preview of an item -- it just isn't used for action buttons. 'Peeking' into the name and description of an icon would be a fairly straightforward extension of the idea. It just... isn't used that way.
baddox 8y ago
How common was undo really? I don't remember undo functionality being anywhere except in content editor applications like word processors, and that's still the case today.
- radley 8y ago
  I can't speak for Windows, but almost every app on Mac has undo. Undo and redo had widespread adoption by the 1990s. iPhone implemented shake to undo back with iPhone 3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undo http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/21/undo-button-iphone-shaking-motions/ http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/21/undo-button-iphone-shaking-mo...
- freeone3000 8y ago
  What isn't a content editor application? Word has it. Paint has it. Outlook has it. Windows Explorer (the file manager) has it. It's universal across Windows and Mac OSes and as universal as anything can be on linux.
  - baddox 8y ago
    > What isn't a content editor application? Well, anything that isn't a text/content editor (or a file system manager, which I had forgotten to mention), so basically the vast majority of computer usage. Settings in applications, navigation state of applications, state of the OS/window manager itself (I'm not aware of a desktop environment where moving or closing a window or application supports an undo feature), etc. Web browsers and most file managers do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo." The comment I was initially replying to talked about being afraid to press buttons in modern UIs because of the lack of undo. My claim is that, except for buttons that change formatting in text/content editors or buttons that make changes in some file system managers, undo functionality has really never existed to my knowledge.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > Web browsers (...) do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo." Not in practice, as this feature is universally broken by modern web developers, making it totally unreliable. You have a good point about undo - it was universally a feature for reverting operations on edited data, not on application state itself. But then again, it was compensated by buttons having reliable tooltips, and most options available in textual menus.
WhyNotHugo 8y ago
On iOS you can shake your phone to "undo" on most apps. It's kinda neat, but most people only discover this by coincidence.
- dingaling 8y ago
  That's interesting but counter-intuitive. In the real world we shakes things to mix them up, not to revert to a previous state i.e. shaking increases entropy. I wonder who at Apple decided otherwise and why. Perhaps someone with a doctorate in cosmology who is fighting against heat-death.

mattmcknight 8y ago

The other thing missing in mobile is the hover event which would bring up a tooltip. Maybe future advanced screens will recognize a literal hover over the button as a trigger for a tooltip, or we'll get an annotate mode for the icons.

cpu 8y ago
Sometimes you get lucky and the tooltip works on Android (tap and hold), but in my experience not terribly many apps support this.
systoll 8y ago
I feel like 3D touch is all the hardware you need... it just isn't used that way. A 'peek' already provides a preview of an item -- it just isn't used for action buttons. 'Peeking' into the name and description of an icon would be a fairly straightforward extension of the idea. It just... isn't used that way.

baddox 8y ago

How common was undo really? I don't remember undo functionality being anywhere except in content editor applications like word processors, and that's still the case today.

radley 8y ago
I can't speak for Windows, but almost every app on Mac has undo. Undo and redo had widespread adoption by the 1990s. iPhone implemented shake to undo back with iPhone 3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undo http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/21/undo-button-iphone-shaking-motions/ http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/21/undo-button-iphone-shaking-mo...
freeone3000 8y ago
What isn't a content editor application? Word has it. Paint has it. Outlook has it. Windows Explorer (the file manager) has it. It's universal across Windows and Mac OSes and as universal as anything can be on linux.
- baddox 8y ago
  > What isn't a content editor application? Well, anything that isn't a text/content editor (or a file system manager, which I had forgotten to mention), so basically the vast majority of computer usage. Settings in applications, navigation state of applications, state of the OS/window manager itself (I'm not aware of a desktop environment where moving or closing a window or application supports an undo feature), etc. Web browsers and most file managers do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo." The comment I was initially replying to talked about being afraid to press buttons in modern UIs because of the lack of undo. My claim is that, except for buttons that change formatting in text/content editors or buttons that make changes in some file system managers, undo functionality has really never existed to my knowledge.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > Web browsers (...) do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo." Not in practice, as this feature is universally broken by modern web developers, making it totally unreliable. You have a good point about undo - it was universally a feature for reverting operations on edited data, not on application state itself. But then again, it was compensated by buttons having reliable tooltips, and most options available in textual menus.

WhyNotHugo 8y ago

On iOS you can shake your phone to "undo" on most apps. It's kinda neat, but most people only discover this by coincidence.

dingaling 8y ago
That's interesting but counter-intuitive. In the real world we shakes things to mix them up, not to revert to a previous state i.e. shaking increases entropy. I wonder who at Apple decided otherwise and why. Perhaps someone with a doctorate in cosmology who is fighting against heat-death.