Thanks so much for all the discussion so far.

I'm not so sure about infinite scroll I need to think more about this. It seems wrong to me as there are always a finite amount of sections (so it's never truly infinite or close to looking like infinite) and these sections are already in the HTML so it seems wrong / unnecessary to hide them.

That said I think there are benefits to both approaches of the existing behaviour - one where they are all open (and can be collapsed) and one where they are all collapsed (and can be open)

I think a sticky preference would be best that uses a combination of localStorage and user preferences (the latter taking preference). I think such a setting could be surfaced as a simple toggle control at the bottom of the footer (although I'm not sure what the icon would look like).

We could also imagine 'learning' a preference based on behaviour by a user (do they always open all the sections they come across?)

Personally the current setup only makes sense to me if the page loads quicker due to not serving the html inside sections and loading the content of those sections only when the section is toggled open (ie. lazy loading content of sections). In the current form we serve all the content and due to this there is an inevitable flash of the section collapsing as the JavaScript and entire page has loaded.

I'm not sure I agree with Steven's assessment that this will make navigating between sections difficult - behaviour gets reverted - you close the section to see the next section. This is akin to flicking through a book and flicking to the next page (closing the section) if the heading at the top of the page doesn't interest you. It just means you don't see all the headings in one go which could be a good or bad thing.

Is there an A/B test we could do here? In situation A we show all sections open by default on say the Barack Obama article and in case B show all sections closed by default (note this is a simple line of JavaScript). If we were to do this what would we be optimising for?

* Would it be how many sections are collapsed?

* What % of the article is read (could equate to how far down the article a user gets)?

I think this matter can be solved by collecting data...

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Adam Baso <abaso@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Resending now that I'm on the design@lists.wikimedia.org list.

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Adam Baso <abaso@wikimedia.org> wrote:

There's been some additional discussion on this, taking search engine and Find in Page optimization into account.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45951

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49202 (my duplicate with some Find in Page-oriented stuff)

The smart search engine / Find in Page stuff is moderately complex, so I think the tappable options for section expansion are the place to start.

It seems to me that the following achieves TOC-like information at a glance while balancing page load performance, usability, user choice, and user choice measurement:

* Don't auto-expand articles by default

* Do have a JavaScript-injected "Expand Sections" / "Collapse Sections" feature at the top of articles with multiple sections

* Do have a user preference for Auto-Expand Sections on Article Load.

* To gauge love/hate for features, have two preferences as follows

Show 'Expand/Collapse Sections' Option at Top of Articles

On / Off    (default = On)

Auto-Expand Sections on Article Load

Note: this may slow page load time

On / Off    (default = Off)

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Jared Zimmerman <jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:

I like the idea of expanding by default because it fixes my pet peev of not being able to do a find on page from my mobile browser without first expanding all sections. 

Jared Zimmerman  \\  Director of User Experience \\ Wikimedia Foundation               

M : +1 415 609 4043 |   :  @JaredZimmerman

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Mathieu Stumpf <psychoslave@culture-libre.org> wrote:

I didn't followed the thread, but if you try to consult the french
wiktionary with the mobile interface it's impossible: section title are
links so when you try to uncollapse them, you follow the link.

Le lundi 16 septembre 2013 à 11:05 -0700, Brion Vibber a écrit :

> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Arthur Richards
> <arichards@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>         If we still want to explore dynamically loading article
>         sections (which we all seemed to be in favor of when we did
>         annual planning back in June), it's hard for me to imagine how
>         we could realistically pull that off if we display sections
>         uncollapsed as default.
>
>
> We could rig up an "infinite scroll" type of situation, where we
> basically:
>
>
> * load section 0 and section 1
>
> * leave placeholder <div>s for sections 2 and beyond
>
> * when the user scrolls down into section 1, start loading section 2
> in the background
>
> ** prepare the same thing for the bottom of section 2 load section 3,
> etc...
>
>
> Of course a problem with this setup is that if you go offline partway
> through reading the article, the later sections might be unavailable
> when you scroll down to them.
>
>
>
> -- brion
>
>
>

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