[savannah-help-public] [sr #108562] "Submit" appears in two places, hitting the wrong one loses your submission

[Bob Proulx]

Follow-up Comment #1, sr #108562 (project administration):

What you say is true.  But it is also true if the user clicks any link.  And
it is a generic issue with any web site form.  Any time the user clicks on a
link it will take you to that link.

The best thing to do if that happens is to immediately click the browser back
button.  That should restore the form contents and place you back to where you
were before.

As a web style principle links are HTTP GET requests and GET should be "safe"
and idempotent.  They are not supposed to change state.  As a matter or
practice we usually allow logout as a link since logouts are safe.  But
anything else that changes state should be a POST request.  This gives obvious
feedback to the user that by hitting a form button that they are taking an
action that does something.  And by the same logic that if you click on a link
that you are not doing anything.  A link won't submit a form.

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html

Sometimes you see web sites violate this principle just the same.  Those are
definitely broken if they do not follow those rules.

I would like to ask a couple questions so that your experience is documented
properly.  But I fear to say that it is unlikely this will get fixed any time
soon.  There isn't any active development of the Savannah web site these days.
 There isn't anyone who is actively working on the web site code.  Therefore I
don't think there will be any improvements to it anytime soon.  Someone would
need to do the work and at this moment there isn't anyone to be that someone. 
Notice that I am only adding comments to this ticket and did not assign it to
myself.  I am not in a position to be able to develop for this web site myself
either.  So the ticket will simply be hanging.

If you were interested in improving the web site then that would be great.  If
you submitted patches that improved the code then it is likely that they would
be incorporated.

When you see the upper submit is that the one under a pull down menu?  It
depends somewhat upon what theme you are using which is why I ask.  But it
should be hidden under a CSS pulldown menu.  It should be a link.  Is that
what you are seeing?


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