Show alert for unsaved changes if autosave is not on

[kerjenwang]

Nature of issue?

• New feature request

New feature details:

Hi, is it possible to enable auto-save as soon as a user is logged in and starts a new project? Currently I believe the auto-save only enables AFTER the user saves the project for the first time...

Thanks!

[welcome]

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[catarak]

Thanks for the suggestion! The reasoning behind not starting it immediately is to prevent users from creating a bunch of empty sketches that they don't want. For example, if you opened the editor quickly to test something out but ultimately don't want to save your work. Open to other thoughts though!

It could make sense to turn on autosave if you're opening an existing project and then editing. It won't start autosave then until you've saved it once as well.

[kerjenwang]

Hi Cassie,

Thanks for responding!

I see your point. How about enabling auto-save as soon as the project is renamed?

This actually happened to me and I lost a bunch of code. I started a project and renamed it, but I didn't actually explicitly save it because I thought by renaming the project it would automatically save the project under the new name. When the program froze and I closed the browser tab, the code was gone.

Alternatively, whenever a user starts a new project, is it possible to have a pop-up appear to remind the user to save the project after 5 or 10 minutes?

Thanks again!

[catarak]

That's a good suggestion. It seems like if you're changing the project name then you probably care about the code you're writing. A reminder popup could also be good—this basically is the approach that CodePen takes, in which the save button will wiggle.

[kerjenwang]

Thank you!

[debajitdeb11]

@catarak Can I work on this?

[catarak]

@debajitdeb11 sure! I don't think there's a 100% clear vision of what this should look like, so feel free to throw out some options before getting to coding. What I do know is, I don't like sketches saving automatically when you first open it, I find that it creates a bunch of junk sketches that I have to wade through the ones that I want. I think, instead, it would make sense to direct users to save if they've been working on a new sketch or editing an existing sketch. This is how CodePen directs users:

[raclim]

To me, this feels related to #1635