Widgets' Cancel links don't really work

[Otto42]

Current trunk.

When editing a text widget, there's a link on the bottom left named "Change" and a link in the upper right named "Cancel". These links do basically the same thing as far as I can tell. Either way, changes you've made to the content of the widget is altered. When you "Save Changes", your widget will be altered.

Seems like a usability issue to me.

I'll work on this soon.

I think this is a release blocker, but not a beta blocker.

I'd like to recommend doing away with the overall "Save Changes" button and give the individual widget buttons 'global control.' So when you remove a widget, it's really gone; or when you make changes to a widget, they automatically stick.

This will allow us to navigate multiple sidebars more quickly, without having to hit the "Save Changes" button every single time.

5886.diff disables widget form elements on cancel so that the canceled changes are not saved.

What it does.

1. Load the widget page.
2. Click "Edit" on a widget. Make some change. Click "Cancel".
3. Click "Save Changes" on the bottom.
4. Notice that the changes you canceled were not saved. The content is the same as when you first loaded the page.

It's not perfect.

1. Load the widget page.
2. Click "Edit" on a widget. Make some change. Click "Change".
3. Re-edit that widget by again clicking "Edit" on that widget. Make some more changes. Click "Cancel"
4. Click "Save Changes" on the bottom.
5. Notice that no changes were saved. The content is the same as when you first loaded the page. One might have expected the first change you made to be saved (you didn't cancel that change), but the second to be discarded.

To fix that bug, we'd either have to store old states of widgets in JS, or have the "Change" and "Cancel" buttons do ajax requests (which would implement bryan868`s recommendation). Unless this is marked as a high priority, neither of those things is going to happen this late in the game.

Why shouldn't this be a high priority is the question. Who can deem it a high priority?

(In [7176]) Make cancel mean cancel. Props mdawaffe. see #5886

AJAX fanciness isn't going to happen in 2.5.

When will the AJAX fanciness occur?

possibly fixed. see #9511

Fixed with the widgets UI redesign. On the new widgets page saving is done with ajax for each widget separately. Canceling is no longer an issue.