Re: Abominations of nature (and flagrant violation of the Principle of Least Astonishment)

[David Given <dg@...>]

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Don Hopkins wrote:
[...]
> There is no online banking site on earth that will undo a money transfer
> when you press the back button, and for good reason.

Well, yeah, that's why banking sites don't work like that.

OTOH, any well-written timetabling site *does* work like that, because the
users *will* want to skip back and forwards between the various form pages as
the collect information. I enter the dates and press OK; I select the flight
and press OK; I look at the prices and don't like tham; I press BACK, select a
 different flight and press OK... if I had to restart from the beginning every
time, I'd quickly get highly frustrated and use someone else's.

And, to be honest, I'd expect a multi-page bank form to do this as well ---
within the form. Trying to back up over the actual transaction would fail, of
course. Backing up over the data entry phase is exactly what the users want
- --- you invoke the Principle of Least Astonishment; people expect the 'back'
button to take them to the last page they were looking at.

Like any programming feature, continuations can be abused (see signature).
That doesn't mean that they're not useful in the right context.

- --
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