Hi design team, Trevor, James et al.,
There are a few issues with the hybrid section link editing UI
deployed with VisualEditor:
* Because it's a mouseover action, it doesn't translate to touch interfaces.
* If you prefer to edit source, you basically have to train yourself
to target an invisible link in order to not be delayed by the
animation.
* Because the animation triggers on mouseover, it can be distracting
while scrolling/reading.
In my view, we need to consider an alternative default experience
soon. I've seen the current behavior commonly cited as a reason to opt
out of the the VE beta.
The team rejected static [edit] [edit source] source, I think
reasonably, because of too much clutter in the section headings.
My suggestion would be to take a similar approach to the mobile site:
have an icon for section editing (e.g. pencil) and maybe a different
one for source editing (e.g. "<>" which is commonly used to switch
into source mode in RTEs).
The one other alternative is to get rid of the animation and set the
behavior via preference.
I think this problem would benefit from a few more approaches being
kicked around.
Cheers :)
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation