Hi,
we received a lot of feedback that suggests, that the extension needs
some usability improvements if it shall be useful to casual visitors. I
´ll share our thoughts on how to improve the situation and it would be
great if you could share yours.
We distinguish two use cases:
* Users want to create collections
* Users want to share/find collections
= Creating collections =
The main challenge for most users is to discover this feature at all -
as most visitors simply ignore the sidebar. The current solution
having a dedicated portlet for the extension labeled "Create book" is
the best we could think off so far. We plan to remove all but the "add
wiki page" links if users have no active collection. This will save
some space in the sidebar making it less obtrusive if users are not
interested in creating collections.
When compiling collections users are limited to add articles they are
visiting (except for categories). We thought it might be beneficial to
permit to add articles which are linked on a page without visiting
them. The idea is to have an advanced book-creation-mode which allows
for easier collection building. It could be activated if users have
non- empty collections. Using JS article links could be enhanced to
have an "add article" button if users hover them. This mode could be
displayed and disabled in a box in the upper right content area. See
the following link for a mock-up:
http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/raw-attachment/wiki/UsabilityIdeas/mock-up-…
We refactored the collection page which now allows to resort articles
and chapters using drag and drop. A more fine grained and verbose ajax
progress was implemented when documents are generated. As this is not
yet updated on Wikibooks - you can always find the latest version of
the software running at
http://simple.pediapress.com/w/ .
= Sharing / Finding collections =
The current implementation allows:
* saving collections in user or global namespace
* all collections are listed in the category collections
* manually editing (e.g. adding them to more categories)
* direct links to load, or export collections can be created and used
on other pages (this needs some documentation though)
Still missing is some mechanism to track, describe and promote
valuable collections - distinguishing them from those trial or
outdated collections that start piling up in the collection category.
Maybe one could use ordinary wiki pages ("featured collections") to
list good and maintained collections. Collections could also be linked
from topic main pages (books, portals, ...). Do you think this will be
sufficient or is a more formal and technically supported solution
necessary?
Please comment and post your thoughts on how to improve the usability?
Thanks,
Heiko
