Warning about replacing a project with file>upload... is not explicit enough

[BryceLTaylor]

Expected Behavior

When choosing File>Load from your computer it should give a warning that makes it clear that you are deleting the current project.

Actual Behavior

The current error message has not made that clear to some users. The current message says:

"Replace contents of the current project?"

One person said "And I clicked yes, because I had just saved the [project name] project so I assumed it was safe to do so. "

We should likely explicitly say that by "replace" we mean "delete." It could say "Replace the contents of the current project? This will delete the current project."

Steps to Reproduce

Create a new project
Choose File>Load from your computer
Choose a project from your computer
Note: the alert appears. It can be interpretable as not meaning you're deleting your old project.

Operating System and Browser

Mac Chrome

[ericrosenbaum]

cc @carljbowman @kathymakes

[BryceLTaylor]

This came from help desk ticket 194154

[carljbowman]

Just tossing out an idea, haven't thought too deeply about so there may be other issues by this approach.

We have always had this tension of how understandable is this action as it feels it's described as a single action, but it does two things: both uploading and replacing contents. Of course, there is good reason that "Upload" replaces the contents of a project, for example in the case that someone has downloaded a project, made changes offline, and wants to re-upload the project of a previously shared project so it retains all community data related to the project (e.g. loves, favs, comments, studios...).

Maybe, we should instead have decouple these and have two different options in the file menu. One could imagine it being something like: "Upload to new project...", "Upload and replace...", and "Download project..."

Exact language should be taken with a grain of salt, using this the language above for sake of discussion.

This might help with being able to reenforce that these are two different actions, instead of trying to describe one without the context of the other. We could still pop a modal / alert to give more context, but having both represented might help clarify they are different. It allows for the more nuanced use case of "upload and replace" to still exist, but as distinguished from what some people expect which is to "upload to new project" (or upload and not replace contents).

[kaaaaathy]

@carljbowman I like this idea! Having a separate action could be a pretty clarifying approach. Because for someone who wants to load an SB3 and not replace a project contents, they would have to know to do "File > New... File > Load > Replace." which is a lot of discrete steps. I'm not sure which is a more salient use case! I can assume that both are useful.

I liked "Upload and replace" vs. "Upload to new." Could also consider "Overwrite" although that might be more technical.

At least right now, I feel like distinguishing in the menu would be the best way to clear up some of that complexity.

Also on a separate note, we can in general consider where we want to use browser level modals, vs. homebrewed Scratch modals. The browser level modals are easier to close and ignore, and might feel more disconnected from the editor.

[BryceLTaylor]

It seems like maybe we could quickly make a change to the text on the current alert and then as a separately prioritized piece of work, add a second item to the file menu.

[benjiwheeler]

See also the custom modal that Carl designed before (which we didn't implement because of a technical problem, but it's not a problem with the design): #4762

Another choice could be to expand this custom modal design to prompt the user to choose whether to delete and replace the current project, or create a new project

[apple502j]

Similar thing: scratchfoundation/scratch-desktop#41

[benjiwheeler]

I labeled this High impact, high severity. Making the text change Bryce suggested would be really fast and seems to me like an improvement.