Comment by T-hawk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by T-hawk | Hacker News Reader

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> It's about addressability - being able to link to things. Links are kind of important on the Web.

Of course, but not in all applications and situations. What does it mean to link to the middle of a Farmville game session? It's by definition a transient state within a process that does not need re-linkability or history. Similarly, we've been using desktop applications forever with no notion of addressability. You don't send an image with the expectation that the recipient can jump into the middle of your editing actions in Photoshop.

When a web application is fundamentally about an interactive process rather than publishing content, the notion of back and history can lose much meaning. Using Back as a universal undo button or a URL to bookmark any arbitrary slice of content does not hold up in the world of more complicated AJAX partial dynamic page updates. Should designers continue to contort Javascript and the very notion of URLs to satisfy this increasingly-misplaced user expectation, or work to educate users that sometimes "Back" or bookmarking cannot have a meaningful result?

Nobody expects a "back" or "undo" button in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation. How did this expectation become so irreversibly fundamental in computers?

> Nobody expects a "back" or "undo" button in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation. How did this expectation become so irreversibly fundamental in computers?

Wow. We're only just now getting to the point where it isn't possible to accidentally render your computer unusable with a few stray actions.

You seem to be forgetting just how unforgiving computers were even 8 years ago, any why iOS devices are so enticing to regular folks.

Undo isn't back. They're different concepts. If I send a friend request on Facebook and then click back, that doesn't cancel the friend request.

Don't conflate the two concepts. Undo good, back... not always required?

I think it's the non-linear processes that have trouble with the back button. Clicking back should go to the last modal state. If your app is fundamentally non-modal, then the last state is outside your app and clicking back should exit (after persisting all state, of course).

But most apps can be broken into at least a few states. For any document based app, like Photoshop, navigation should probably move between document views. Any modal dialogs should be closable with the back button. You don't have to use it for everything, it just has to do something sensible and non-destructive at any given time.

    You don't send an image with the expectation that the recipient can jump into the middle of your editing actions in Photoshop.

Actually, that sounds really appealing.

> Nobody expects a "back" or "undo" button in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation. How did this expectation become so irreversibly fundamental in computers?

People make mistakes. All people, in everything they do, at every level of responsibility.

"Back" or "undo" buttons in everyday activities like driving a car or cooking or making social conversation would be astoundingly useful. In your first example alone, literally tens of thousands of lives would be saved every year.

The expectation is irreversibly fundamental in computing because in computing, unlike reality, it is actually possible.

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