Juliano F. Ravasi wrote:
Platonides wrote:
What about people with javascript disabled?
This question is so cliché... It has become one of the default excuses when someone doesn't want to bother thinking about a problem.
Hey, hey, be quiet. In fact, i would welcome such option. But it's an obvious drawback.
Then, I argue:
- How many users, normal users, have javascript disabled? Note that we
are power users. The average user doesn't even know the difference between a "computer" and "Windows", and use whatever is installed. Javascript is something beyond their naked-eye visible universe. They don't know it exists, and how to disable it. These users are the majority.
- How many of these users, who have Javascript disabled, are actually
editors of content in Wikipedia and other MediaWiki-based wikis?
- How many of these editors who have Javascript disabled will actually
feel more inconvenient to go up and click the "edit this page" link on the top of the article instead of turning Javascript back on?
I don't know. You'd need to study it. I'd rather prefer not having to answer to all users complaining their edit links are gone. The numbers may be higher than estimated ;) You'd expect an ever lesser number of people not having *images* enambled. Yet, there have been people for whose "SUL doesn't work" because the images loading the cookies weren't being loaded.
- Disabling Javascript completely render so many (badly designed) sites
unusable that doing so almost rips you of a leg. Who are really concerned about having Javascript enabled ends up using Opera or the NoScript extension to disable scripts selectively. In this case, the user just needs to enable Javascript for MediaWiki sites. Simple.
The point is, Mediawiki tries to be rightly designed :)
- Adding section edit links via Javascript is not going to render
MediaWiki unusable, not even near that. People will still be able to read anything, and *edit* anything, since we are not going to get rid the "edit this page" functionality.
Of course, but it looks like a step in the wrong direction.
- MediaWiki already depends on Javascript for many other non-essential
stuff. Of course, proper care was taken to not make it unusable, although it sucks using MediaWiki without Javascript. Table sorting, quick watch/unwatch, instant upload filename collision check, search suggestions based on page titles, etc... They are all convenient features added to MediaWiki via Javascript. I don't see any problem in making edit links the same.
They couldn't be done without javascript. On the other hand, section edit links don't need it at all.
- There is always the option of using <noscript>...</noscript> as a
fallback: Use javascript to place edit links for people who have Javascript enabled, and leave <noscript/> fallbacks in place for people who don't. I just tested in Firebug, selecting and copying a text across an invisible <noscript/> tag doesn't copy its contents, so it would fix the problem of the surprise "[Edit]"s that pop up when you copy/paste text from the wiki.
Seems interesting. It could be made a configuration option: *Inline edit links *Full javascript edit links *Javascript edit links with <noscript> *No edit links at all
My worry is that edit links position and magic is so fragile that who know what would happen by also adding <noscript> and javascript to the mix.
However, that could fix bug 11555. Screen readers will probably read noscript sections, but would ignore edit links if generated by javascript, which is a Good Thing(tm) [CCing Per].