I'm not sure about changing the text.  That might be too attention-grabbing.

If changing the text makes the action more contextual, it tends to work well.
We applied and tested with users similar approaches [1]. some examples are the Draft namespace prototypes (where "publish draft" turns into "save" once there are changes) and the translate extension (where possible outdated translations have "Confirm translation" as the initial action and it turns into "Save" when the user modifies the translation).

A possible distraction can be produced if the change in text length has a big impact, but you can play with min-width to compensate that (giving some extra room to the button which is expected to grow). In this case, since we are talking about silent buttons, that is even less of a problem (compared to colourful primary action buttons).


[1] Testing sessions for draft namespaces available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace/Usability_testing/Results


On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 6:22 AM, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 03/05/2014 12:33 PM, Jared Zimmerman wrote:
That's partly (but not strongly) why I think both should be quiet
destructive. But since both would be quiet, either quiet neutral
(cancel) or quiet destructive (discard) the user won't actually see a
color change or appearance when they enter text.

I think the idea of starting quiet neutral, and changing to quiet destructive when they have (unsaved) changes, makes sense.  I agree it shouldn't be too attention-grabbing, since quiet buttons are not visible until hover/focus.

I'm not sure about changing the text.  That might be too attention-grabbing.


For non-JS I'll say what I always say. We should have a graceful
controlled degradation for these users. In this can they will see no
change. eg. the button will always say cancel , and not change based on
their actions.

Yes, I think this is fine.

For the core edit page, I filed as https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62304 .  There is also a Flow one S filed at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62290

Matt Flaschen


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Pau Giner
Interaction Designer
Wikimedia Foundation