I proposed this on mediawiki-l. What are your thoughts on this as frequent users of the MediaWiki interface?
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Date: 8 Nov 2007 13:37 Subject: Feature suggestion for UI: make the "cancel" link on an edit page a button To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org
I've just been setting up an intranet MediaWiki, and it's already very popular and making me popular in turn. Thanks, MediaWiki developers!
A co-worker just made a suggestion which strikes me as a good idea for MediaWiki in general:
You know how the edit pages have "cancel" as a clickable link? It should really be a button. Web forms generally have "cancel" buttons rather than links. (He didn't notice "cancel" was there at first and was wondering if he needed to hit the "back" button.)
Thoughts? Objections to this? Worth filing in Bugzilla as a feature request?
- d.
On 11/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I proposed this on mediawiki-l. What are your thoughts on this as frequent users of the MediaWiki interface?
I can't say I even knew there was a "cancel" link until you just pointed it out. There are all sorts of usability issues with the editing interface far worse than this one.
Gawd, I just noticed that the current text at en looks like this:
-- Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*. <edit box and stuff here> Do not copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. It will be deleted. <funny characters and stuff> # By submitting content, you agree to release your contributions under the GNU Free Documentation License. ... # Only public domain resources can be copied without permission—this does not include most web pages or images. --
(if it's worth saying, it's worth saying three times, right?)
Somehow I don't think the wiki model is working so well for user interface design. Would that we had a dedicated UI expert in charge of it.
Getting back to your original question, does it really have to be a button? A big "cancel" link at the title level would be fine. But in any case, it's relatively intuitive after a while that you simply press "back" or even the "article" link at the top. There are a few places where similar logic applies
Steve
On Nov 9, 2007 9:12 AM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
(if it's worth saying, it's worth saying three times, right?)
Somebody famous said that "anything worth doing is worth over-doing", but it really doesn't matter as the warnings are still not conspicuous enough to be noticed.
Somehow I don't think the wiki model is working so well for user interface design. Would that we had a dedicated UI expert in charge of it.
Of course, people who actually use the UI are always in a better position to judge such things than an expert consultant. If somebody wants to hire a professional, that's fine with me, even if I do believe it to be a waste of money. I would only hope they start working on some brand new skins, rather than fucking around with the existing monobook.
Getting back to your original question, does it really have to be a button?
No, but as David said it would make the edit form look just a tiny bit more normal.
A big "cancel" link at the title level would be fine.
That sounds like it'd be obnoxious. Might add that "big links" are vulnerable to unintended clicks, which may result in a lot of lost luggage when edits are accidentally aborted, especially in notoriously crappy web browsers which refuse to cache user-entered form content for even two seconds.
Rather than discussing the visual appearance of the edit form, let's talk about practical features, like the one I see here in gmail:
Draft autosaved at 11:05 AM (1 minute ago)
Hehehe, keep dreaming maybe?
—C.W.
On 11/10/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Somebody famous said that "anything worth doing is worth over-doing", but it really doesn't matter as the warnings are still not conspicuous enough to be noticed.
Yep. Fr says it once, and says it loudly:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Variable_m étasyntaxique&action=edit
Of course, people who actually use the UI are always in a better position to judge such things than an expert consultant. If somebody
?
wants to hire a professional, that's fine with me, even if I do
believe it to be a waste of money. I would only hope they start
Who mentioned money?
working on some brand new skins, rather than fucking around with the
existing monobook.
That would be nice too. There are plenty of others out there.
Rather than discussing the visual appearance of the edit form, let's
talk about practical features, like the one I see here in gmail:
Draft autosaved at 11:05 AM (1 minute ago)
Hehehe, keep dreaming maybe?
It's been mentioned before. I lost a big stub yesterday when my browser
crashed. Even if it could just save the draft as a cookie, that would be a big help.
Steve
On Nov 9, 2007 7:12 AM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Gawd, I just noticed that the current text at en looks like this:
-- Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*.
<edit box and stuff here> Do not copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. It will be deleted. <funny characters and stuff> # By submitting content, you agree to release your contributions under the GNU Free Documentation License. ... # Only public domain resources can be copied without permission—this does not include most web pages or images. --
(if it's worth saying, it's worth saying three times, right?)
I've asked numerous times at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#GFDL_notice_-_twice_no... and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Copyrightwarning#4_Gnus for this to be fixed/addressed. We just need a confident/bold admin to do so...
Quiddity
On 09/11/2007, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
I've asked numerous times at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#GFDL_notice_-_twice_no... and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Copyrightwarning#4_Gnus for this to be fixed/addressed. We just need a confident/bold admin to do so...
Changed.
- d.
I can hear the technical objections now: "But it wouldn't *do* anything. Nothing whatsoever has happened in the Mediawiki database until you hit 'submit', so there's nothing to cancel. The right way to cancel is to hit the browser's 'Back' button, or to click on the mediawiki 'project page' or 'discussion' tab at the top (as appropriate), or to close the window. So it turns out that having 'cancel' be a link is actually The Right Thing."
(None of which is actually a valid argument against the idea from a user interface perspective, of course. In fact, it sounds like a perfectly fine idea to me, even though I'd never personally use it.)
On 09/11/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I can hear the technical objections now: "But it wouldn't *do* anything. Nothing whatsoever has happened in the Mediawiki database until you hit 'submit', so there's nothing to cancel. The right way to cancel is to hit the browser's 'Back' button, or to click on the mediawiki 'project page' or 'discussion' tab at the top (as appropriate), or to close the window. So it turns out that having 'cancel' be a link is actually The Right Thing."
Considering the fellow who suggested this is a Unix sysadmin and as techy as anyone ...
- d.
On 11/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Considering the fellow who suggested this is a Unix sysadmin and as techy as anyone ...
On the technical side, it's almost trivial to add a button which calls
action "view", but then you end up with a URL that looks like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blaa&action=view
rather than
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaa
Not that it really matters. I think with a tiny bit of javascript it could be made to work "properly".
Steve
You know what feature is needed? A check box that when you delete a page, the talk page is deleted also. Doesn't that make sense?
On Nov 9, 2007 8:38 AM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Considering the fellow who suggested this is a Unix sysadmin and as techy as anyone ...
On the technical side, it's almost trivial to add a button which calls
action "view", but then you end up with a URL that looks like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blaa&action=view
rather than
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaa
Not that it really matters. I think with a tiny bit of javascript it could be made to work "properly".
Steve
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On 09/11/2007, Nico Montes cnriaczoy3@gmail.com wrote:
You know what feature is needed? A check box that when you delete a page, the talk page is deleted also. Doesn't that make sense?
Often not. The talk page remaining with a link to the AFD is useful. And speedies will typically not have accumulated a talk page.
- d.
On 09/11/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/11/2007, Nico Montes cnriaczoy3@gmail.com wrote:
You know what feature is needed? A check box that when you delete a page, the talk page is deleted also. Doesn't that make sense?
Often not. The talk page remaining with a link to the AFD is useful. And speedies will typically not have accumulated a talk page.
That's why the suggestion was for a check box so the deleting admin can decide whether or not to delete the talk page. Obviously, always automatically deleting the talk page would be a bad plan.