Author here, I'll try to collect my thoughts into one comment here about why there is no auto-save.
If you implement auto-save, users will expect every click/keystroke to be saved, like how Google Docs does it. Simply adding a 1-minute timer will make people lose work in the last minute, as they switch tabs, go offline, etc. and forget about it for days, when the browser clears tab state.
The other reason is that there is no Undo-Redo implemented on MapHub. Implementing Undo properly in a web app is not trivial if you haven't designed the whole app around a time-traveling state management. It's actually a really difficult problem to solve, even though it looks simple on the surface. Combining it with real-time collaboration is even more complex. Short story: there is no Undo-Redo.
So if you don't have Undo, then Save button plays the role of making a checkpoint, trying out something, reverting if needed. With autosave this could be ruined.
Also, you write that you expect every web app to auto-save, but this is still not the universal case today and definitely wasn't the case a few years ago. I agree that most VC-backed startups with hundred-million-dollar valuations have autosave in their web apps. Again, the proper solution is to have a time-traveling diff system implemented, which can easily get really complicated with real-time multi-user collaboration. Have a look at Figma's technical blog post about this topic [1].
You might be right in saying that it's not a generation of users, but the same users being conditioned to web apps doing auto-save. I agree this is probably the case. The point of the article is this definitely wasn't the case all the time, and how I've experienced this on my side, during my 8+ years of running MapHub.
OK, fair enough, but that doesn't have to preclude autosaving.
> If you implement auto-save, users will expect every click/keystroke to be saved. [...] Simply adding a 1-minute timer will make people lose work in the last minute.
I think a nicer compromise might be a simple debounced isDirty state. If it detects any changes, wait 5 or 10 seconds. If any more changes happen in that same time, wait again (up to some sane max, like a min or few). If no further changes, create a new automatic checkpoint.
It's usually not a big deal if someone loses 10 seconds of work. It is if they lose a few hours.
> Save button plays the role of making a checkpoint, trying out something, reverting if needed. With autosave this could be ruined.
Only if you make the autosave overwrite user checkpoints. Can't they produce their own separate bin of autosave checkpoints? Word has done that for decades, as have video games.
The user can choose to revert to "Blahblah save (10/31/24)" or "Autosave (3 min ago)".
Even if it is a generational thing, it's also just good UX IMO.
Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the product, so created a MapHub account just to try the exact experience. I usually mostly work with hiking maps and planning hikes, so my viewpoint might be off.
I feel the base disconnect is MapHub having very few indication of a workflow: one can create a new map and start working on it in a matter of seconds, adding markers etc. is also relatively quick, with help on the right panel guiding through the option, so it all feels natural.
In contrast the Save button is next to the zoom in/zoom out button, so outside of the tools area, neither in the right or left blocks where one would focus when editing.
The button is also greyed out when starting a map, and will always be visibly present, so after a few minutes I think we learn to ignore it as a visual element. In particular I never use the zoom in/out button (right now I straight pinch on the screen, but I guess touchpad pinch to zoom also works?)
I feel like the UI is really optimized for being out of the way and not having to think about versions. If autosaves are not an option, I think the save button would benefit from being a more "actiony" button and perhaps have a more prominent sibling in one of the tools or editing panel (and probably not just "save" but "save this map" or "take snapshot" or something like that ?)
My favorite map app has a big dark "Save" in a permanent footer inside the edit lists, and I better understand the reason now.
The interesting bit is that for years this wasn't a problem. Like for 5 years I got 0 support requests about missing Save. Also web apps were not auto-saving traditionally, many of them still don't do it today.
It's very possible that if you showed me the MapHub UI eight years ago, I'd have intuited that I'd need to save manually---I can't tell for sure. I am definitely aware that the way I engage with software nowadays is very different than when I started using computers in the early 2000s, and I don't doubt it is still evolving due to the changing conventions in UI and functionality.
I think you are exaggerating the importance of undo/redo. Even in google docs, if you restore from a savepoint you can only go backwards. And besides, the complaints OP got were "I'm losing all my work" - I doubt someone who had some recovery point would be in a worse position to recover than someone who had no recovery point at all.
(in other words, it's not necessary at all to support this feature from the ground up - it just might be necessary in order to have a third, even better way than "no saves" and "imperfect saves")
Well, going forward is undefined (i.e., redo history loss), unless you implement "linearized" history [1], which anecdotally is very confusing for most people.
Hi, author here. I think it's not a good idea to auto save just at random intervals. I certainly don't want my any of my apps to auto save without me telling it to do so. Maybe I'm old fashioned in this regards.
Unfortunately, the world now wants to be autosaved. One day, you might need to look at the usage pattern and AutoSave, perhaps when idle or after a set action is done (or fall back to the default timer). Otherwise, get a checkbox/radio that turns ON/OFF the options to "Autosave."
I'm not sure I want to go back to a world where I could lose a few hours work because I didn't save my work incrementally. (That said, as others suggest, you want to have a way to say known good/useful checkpoints as well.)
If you used programs like Lotus back in the day, you'd realize that that you tended to develop muscle memory to just quit in many cases. You also had crashes that kept you from saving as well.
Can I ask why? What is the harm in saving users work unexpectedly especially when I see a version history here?
I have been working with computers for 30 years, and I would find lack of a timed autosave surprising. Autosave was common on desktop applications in the mid 1990s. See: Everything in the MS Office suite.
The simple reason is that MapHub doesn't have a Google Docs like "time-traveling" version control nor Undo implemented. Undo is _really_ complicated if you don't start your app with that in mind. So the way to work is Save, try something and if you want to revert then you just reload the page.
Of course there is the "Previous versions" feature, but it still breaks my logic of Checkpoint-Experiment-Revert cycle. But I might be alone in this and users would be happier with autosave.
I expect web apps to auto-save because writing text in browsers is historically brittle, because browsers don't naturally persist the things you type into them anywhere. So if you don't create some layer of persistence, there is no natural point at which the user expectably saves things. Auto-save is just part of creating reliable, persisted data in web apps (regardless of whether that is local or remote) without expecting the user to do anything. There is no standard for manual saves to rely on, like there is for native applications that save to files.
So yes, you're old fashioned.
I still hit "Save" in every single offline or online app every time I've made a minimal change, because of old-timer PTSD reflexes: I used to edit files in vi over modem and telnet without screen (tmux), and if the connection had a hiccup, the connection died, my editor died, and the changes died with it. So saving (extremely) frequently was just a way to not lose your changes.
I started with Windows XP and things were so unreliable, with power cuts and software crashing that I saved everytime I took a break from actively working (switching programs, looking away, from the screen,…)
You could implement automatic saves on each change then, instead of regular intervals. You can also have a toggle, enabled by default, I guess, so the elderlies will have the option to make it like the good old times.
Have you checked out Stytch? I'm more than a little biased as the founder but would love to hear any feedback you have if you do. I thought your blog post covered a lot of really important points that are often forgotten when evaluating auth.
We support both a user changing their own email and with our embeddable admin portal, you get an out of the box flow where your customers' admins can update the email (and any auth setting) for other team members.
If you implement auto-save, users will expect every click/keystroke to be saved, like how Google Docs does it. Simply adding a 1-minute timer will make people lose work in the last minute, as they switch tabs, go offline, etc. and forget about it for days, when the browser clears tab state.
The other reason is that there is no Undo-Redo implemented on MapHub. Implementing Undo properly in a web app is not trivial if you haven't designed the whole app around a time-traveling state management. It's actually a really difficult problem to solve, even though it looks simple on the surface. Combining it with real-time collaboration is even more complex. Short story: there is no Undo-Redo.
So if you don't have Undo, then Save button plays the role of making a checkpoint, trying out something, reverting if needed. With autosave this could be ruined.
Also, you write that you expect every web app to auto-save, but this is still not the universal case today and definitely wasn't the case a few years ago. I agree that most VC-backed startups with hundred-million-dollar valuations have autosave in their web apps. Again, the proper solution is to have a time-traveling diff system implemented, which can easily get really complicated with real-time multi-user collaboration. Have a look at Figma's technical blog post about this topic [1].
You might be right in saying that it's not a generation of users, but the same users being conditioned to web apps doing auto-save. I agree this is probably the case. The point of the article is this definitely wasn't the case all the time, and how I've experienced this on my side, during my 8+ years of running MapHub.
[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology...