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 _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

Le 2013-07-26 08:30, Erik Moeller a écrit : I completely agree, and in fact I think I already suggested this approach in a previous mail.

We need to be careful we're not de-emphasizing the edit link, when we want to increase participation. "text + icon" would probably be more noticeable than text alone, but I'm not sure an icon alone is more noticeable than text in this case.

Matt Flaschen _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

The team rejected static [edit] [edit source] source, I think reasonably, because of too much clutter in the section headings.

On Fri, 26 Jul 2013 08:30:43 +0200, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: I *still* think this would be the best solution. Come on, it's not that cluttering, and it would be a known interface for more experienced editors (some gadgets do similar things). Maybe an A/B test comparing current design to this could be run? I had previously implemented this, the abandoned patch is still sitting somewhere in gerrit and could be revived. -- Matma Rex _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

Another option could be to use a "split button" or something along those lines where the user has access to the primary action but a clue is provided on how to get additional ones: [image: Inline image 1] This will help to communicate that Visual Editor is the default (avoiding the initial choice for users that do not need to chose) while providing a path for advanced users. Visual style probably needs adjustment to fit properly next to the section headers. Pau

How many times have you clicked on either of these links recently? I don't mean to berate you personally, but you made four edits on your volunteer account on en.wp last week, and I really think that opinion of active editors bears more weight here, even if they are not professional designers :)

The hover effect is easy to drop - if we are all willing to take the hit on the clutter.

On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: wrote: hit on This is now done on enwiki, with the addition of a "beta" label. We'll now see increased complaints and concerns about clutter, of course. :P We do need to kick into gear thinking on the mid to long term options. A couple of constraints I would formulate: * primacy of one mode or another should be determined by the user as much as possible (i.e. wikitext users should have a happy experience that doesn't nudge them too much to use VE; VE users should have a happy experience that doesn't nudge them too much to use wikitext); * let's avoid animations or hover effects that don't work with touch. My take is that beautiful icons would work well in the mid term, while refactoring the edit UI altogether to make the mode of operation a secondary choice on the edit screen itself (a mode-switch on the edit screen) might be viable in the long run, but would be especially difficult for section editing. But I think we need to explore some bold ideas here both for the mid and long term. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Design mailing list Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design