During the designs for the Translate extension, we thought on making the left toolbar disappear in some circumstances. Translators are very focused on the content and the links provided by the left side toolbar are rarely needed while translating.

The idea is to hide the toolbar initially to reduce the amount of chrome and provide a cue so that users interested in it can bring it back. I created an interactive prototype to illustrate the idea.

The design has been made under the following constraints:

Avoid automatic moving parts. Other alternatives involving the toolbar to hide/show being triggered by scrolling were considered but the resulting change in the layout can be disorienting for the user.
Keep the affordance for going back to the homepage. Users can be in a dead-end if they don't identify the top-left icon of the curent wiki to go back home.
Minimal impact to the current layout. Major changes to the current skin were out of the scope of the curent project.

I wanted to share this since other tools/extensions may have faced a similar need before.

Feel free to provide any feedback, alternative solutions or info on potential problems.

Pau

Pau Giner

Interaction Designer

Wikimedia Foundation