On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 2:20 PM, quiddity pandiculation@gmail.com wrote:
[...] Re: "birds eye view" - I really like this idea, taken to the 'completism' level... A number of text/code editors, have a "minimap" attached to the side.
http://did2memo.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/minimap-in-sublime-text-2.png http://i.imgur.com/OIhkpfA.png http://notepad-plus-plus.org/assets/images/docMap.png It works as an enhanced-scrollbar, and as an overview, and it shows text-selections from ctrl-F.
I think something similar to this would potentially help us:
- To better understand the scope of an article/section/entry, upon first
loading the page.
- As editors, to find & refine wall-of-text paragraphs.
- Encourage light-readers to scroll more, particularly if they see
thumbnails of images - in the same way that good textbooks can use images as content-hooks.
- more?
It would need Increased font size for headings, to enable ToC-like functionality. And some sort of minimal-version, for users who find animated-aspects too distracting. What else?
It might be too complicated to be a global default (UX-wise, and/or Performance-wise), but I'd love to see something like this as an option (toggle or preference or gadget).
Matma Rex made a proof-of-concept for this article-minimap idea. Code: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Matma_Rex/article-map.js Screenshots: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minimap_script_screenshot_1.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minimap_script_screenshot_2.png By default, it just shows a button in the top corner, labeled "Render minimap". The rendered minimap is clickable, hence functions as a giant scrollbar.
It doesn't work as a ToC-replacement (for which Prateek's experiment is a much better contender), but it is a very interesting script, that I'll certainly leave enabled for the forseeable future.
On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 3:42 AM, Prateek Saxena psaxena@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com wrote:
Our table of contents is in desperate need of improvement. Having that
be more accessible throughout the reading experience would be a big step forward[1] (much like the Wikipedia iOS app). Having a proper TOC means users don't have to collapse/expand anything.
A buggy experiment:
importStylesheet( 'User:Prtksxna/toc.css' ); importScript( 'User:Prtksxna/toc.js' );Tested on latest Firefox and Chrome. Refreshing a couple of times usually takes care of any visual bugs.
This is great indeed! Could this eventually be a new Beta Feature?