For years the fact that Discourse didn’t offer to “save draft for later” meant that it wouldn’t be saved. For example because you hadn’t entered enough characters.
Now I never know if I am loosing my draft or not. I can no longer use the button next to “create topic” that confirms that the draft can be saved. I can only choose “discard” which means I will delete it, or “cancel” which just takes me back to the composer. Or I can try clicking the “x” way over on the other side of the screen and hope that the toast message will say “Draft saved.” Maybe it won’t, because my draft wasn’t long enough - but by then it’s too late, it’s already gone.
Is there a way to check whether my draft was saved before risking to loose it that I might have missed? Checking the list of my current drafts before closing the composer works, but it’s a pretty annoying workaround.
I also preferred having the button on the left, because that’s where my focus is while writing. It’s where I see the composer window and where I interact with the toolbar. Sometimes I glance at the preview on the right, but most of the time I’m focused on the left. That’s where all my interaction happens. That’s another reason why I usually preferred to use that button even though it meant an extra click.
Thanks for telling me. I cannot see texts that appear on hover on my tablet, that’s why I didn’t know about it, but that’s also why it doesn’t really help me.
But I am curious: What does the button say when you click “new topic” and enter only a few characters into the composer? Discourse doesn’t save drafts with less than the minimum required characters, so I wonder what the text on hover says in this case. Does it still say “save and close” then, and does it really save your draft in that case? Or does it simply say “close” without “save”?
I know this sounds like I would also lose only a few characters in that case, but actually you can quote quite a few posts and enter only a few characters and decide to continue later. Since Discourse doesn’t count characters in quotes, I sometimes stay below 20 characters before I decide to continue later. That’s how I lost quite a few drafts, and finding all those quotes again is not that fun. That’s why I prefer to ensure my draft actually gets saved.