Post History

Saving post after ALT text warning still treats the draft as unsaved

This is about a bug I've encountered a few days ago when I wrote an answer to the new design question, and which I had not yet gotten around to report. The bug ultimately led me to double-post my answer.

Here's what happened:

In my post, I included an image, but forgot to add an ALT text. When I submitted the post, I got a message telling me that I didn't add the alt text (this actually was a pleasant surprise).

Thus I scrolled up to the edit box, added the ALT text, and pressed the “Save Post” button below the message. So far, so good.

However after I did so, the post appeared, but I also got a message that there are unsaved changes in my draft, which was still loaded in the edit box right below, still with a “Save Post” button below. Since the only change I had done was the ALT text, which isn't visible normally, it wasn't clear to me whether the old or the new version had been saved. However I expected that if I press the save button below, the worst case that should happen would be a no-change edit of my answer (that's why I didn't bother using web developer tools to figure out if the post already had the ALT text — something a normal user shouldn't need to do anyway).

Instead, however, it turned out that it posted my message a second time. There's not much damage (I just deleted one of the two posts), but clearly this is not how it should be.

I think the problem is that on submission, the system has to explicitly be told that the draft now is posted and therefore needs to be discarded, and the function triggered by the submit button under the message warning about the forgotten ALT text does not do that.