Everywhere you go, any building you enter, any OS you operate, any settings window you open, one rule remains set in stone, “THE ESCAPE DOOR”. Always give an exit path, a way to make it all go away, make it look like nothing happened. But Gnome seems to think otherwise. Any settings window you open, all you see is a “close” button.

Gnome-ui-flaw

I made a few changes and then tried to “undo” them by using the following methods:

  1. Pressing the “close” button.

  2. Pressing the little “x” on the upper right corner.

  3. Pressing the “Escape” key.

  4. Pressing “Alt+F4”.

But no dice. Every method leads to saving of changes. The same thing occurs with EVERY dialogue box you can find in Gnome. I hate to say that this is something Windows seems to have got right (Maybe their UI designers are better than their OS programmers). What’s even more surprising is that even cross-platform apps (e.g. Firefox) give the “Apply” and “Cancel” buttons in Windows but not in Linux.

I hope Gnome developers listen and patch this up, or if there is any “hidden” tricks up your sleeve that will allow me to “go back in time”, please do let me know.