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Undo Ideas

March 10, 2004 2:16 PM

Undo is a great feature that most modern programs now have, but here's some feature request for that great Undo God in the sky that would make Undo even nicer:

  1. Selective Undo: Select an area of a document and Undo only undoes changes in the area selected. The rest of the document is not touched.
  2. Undo/Redo Preview: Microsoft Office is the only application I've seen that that has text that says what it is going to undo or redo (hidden in the drop down next to the icon in the tool bar), but the text is so generic that it's not even helpful. Right now I'm using Frontpage, which is use almost exclusively in text-edit mode. I'm editing Javascript functions, XSL, XML, DHTML, and CSS - but the the Undo dropdown only has "Text Editing" listed 35 times. What good is that? I'd like to see a collection of "Undo preview screenshots" and be able to click on the one that matches the changes what I return to.
  3. Undo Support for User Interface Modifications: How many times have you accidental rearranged a program's layout by dragging a menu bar or icon bar only to find what happened by accident is a total pain to fix. Clicking Undo (or maybe a special version of Undo) should undo these user interface changes. This would put icons back in place, fix relocated menu bars, and return lost toolbars back to view.
  4. Standard API for Undo and Redo: Why does Notepad have only one level of Undo? Any program that uses standard Windows API for input should automatically get unlimited levels of Undo and Redo. Today all Windows programs automatically get access to Cut, Copy, and Paste. In Longhorn, the codename for the next major revision of Windows, every input also automatically gets a Spell Checker. Maybe a feature-filled standardized Undo stack will be added to the features.

Agree, disagree? Have other ideas for improving Undo?

Comments

(1) Dylan Greene
http://www.DylanGreene.com
Posted March 10, 2004 3:35 PM

Another one:

5. Clicking Save is a not a good reason to clear the Undo stack. For all you programmers out there, as a rule... please don't clear the Undo Stack, at least not until the document is closed.

(2) Tim
http://www.timmacrina
Posted March 10, 2004 4:41 PM

I would like to see undo embedded in the document so that even after you close the program you can still go back and undo!

(3) AC
http://djbeermug.blogs.com
Posted March 11, 2004 9:20 AM

UI Undo is a great idea for that occasion where a toolbar drops into the "great abyss" at the bottom of the screen, or hides with an unrecognizable corner peaking out from behind another toolbar or such. That is so friggin' frustrating!

(4) Gabriel
http://www.technogamy.com/
Posted March 11, 2004 2:42 PM

I believe that Photoshop also has text next to "Undo/Redo" in the drop down menu that indicates what it is going to undo/redo, as applicable. (Can anyone confirm?) Just a clarification. Buhbye.

(5) Tim
http://www.timmacrina
Posted March 11, 2004 3:47 PM

I think photoshop & illustrator both have Undo and step back, both of which seem to do the same thing. The step back feature is very nice, it gives you a list of filters/functions that have been applied to your photo/drawing.

(6) Ryan Schroeder
http://www.whole-studios.com
Posted March 11, 2004 4:38 PM

Yep, Photoshop's "History Pallette" is pretty much #2 plus the ability to save a snapshot of the document's history. Like setting a milestone that you can easily jump back to.

(7) Corey Gouker
http://blogs.coreygouker.com/
Posted March 12, 2004 12:45 AM

Totally 100% agree... As others have said Photoshop is actually really good for undo and redo. It also has the "reset palette locations" which basically does the UI Undo. Only it does it back to the default settings as when you originally installed the app. Which is great but it could be improved even more. I used to always have this habit with certain apps, like Photoshop, and change a tools settings back to default just in case. Would be nice to undo or redo anything :-)

(8) Craig
http://www.cpfeifer.org
Posted March 14, 2004 2:34 PM

You either have to have a way to dump the undo stack or store it separately from the document. Otherwise folks can take a hex editor to the document and find all the revision info (which has proved embarassing in the past for a few folks).

(9) Marc Clifton
http://www.myxaml.com
Posted March 25, 2004 10:48 PM

Well, if you look at this article:

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/EventPool.asp

You'll notice that hidden in there is a nice IMemento interface, Memento class, and UndoBuffer class, supporting named undo/redo in a general purpose API.

I still have to write the article on the undo/redo implementation though.

Marc

(10) Craig
http://www.cpfeifer.org
Posted April 2, 2004 12:31 AM

If you don't implement a way to dump the stack, there's potential for worse than this:

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/strikeout/

(11) Roni Korenshtein
Posted November 8, 2004 1:26 PM

Dylan, it seem the "great Undo God in the sky" is not only listening to your requests but predicts them in advance and fulfills them... well, at least partially.

US Patent 6523134 "Selective Undo" issued to IBM/Roni Korenshtein

a month before you made your request.

after you see the reference below, please request

peace on earth from your gods...

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6523134.WKU.&OS=PN/6523134&RS=PN/6523134

(12) shep
Posted April 7, 2006 10:41 PM

after all this time - still a damn great idea...

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