[Wikipedia-l] the tool bar : disable it in some browsers (or fix it), please

[Anthere]

Message: 8Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 00:12:17 -0800From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Toolbar updateTo: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.orgMessage-ID: <5CF48A7C-4B20-11D8-B538-000A95DAA284 at pobox.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"On Jan 20, 2004, at 00:00, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:>> The main change is that in browsers which do not support changing a >> text>> selection or inserting text at the cursor (Opera and Konqueror), you >> now>> Far better this way. With my Konqueror it works.(It uses this same behavior in Safari.)> I don't have M$ Explorer. However, I think (as far as I have read) > that there> the buttons insert things like '''bold text''' at the cursor position. > What> happens, if text is selected? Does it gets overwritten with '''bold > text'''> or does it result in '''selected text'''? (Because the latter is what a> newbie user would expect, from his/her experiences with standard word> processing applications) Is that implemented/implementable?Yes;
 if text is selected when you click the button, the selected text is surrounded with the ''' markup (or whatever). It's actually kind of neat. :)In Mozilla this works but there is a bug in Mozilla that causes the textarea to scroll up to the top if there is more text than fits at once. This is going to be extremely confusing for a newbie; if there's no workaround I've been suggesting to Erik that we just have Mozilla fall back to the other behavior (with the secondary box that shows the markup so you can look at it or cut-n-paste).It's really _meant_ for novice users, so having it completely off by default misses the point. :) But we don't want it to be frustrating, either.I've also found it to be somewhat problematic in Internet Explorer for Mac if the browser window is smallish, the focus changes cause things to scroll around strangely. I'm not sure what's the best course of action there.Any other Mac users, can you try editing on test.wikipedia.org and let me know what works /
 doesn't work / goes wacky and crazy?-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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I am glad that you wrote what it was supposed to do by default.

So, if I read well, what it is supposed to do by default, is that when you select a text, then click on the button, it neatly surrounds the text with the appropriate tag.

Ok; that is really neat for a newbie. Granted.

Now, if this is the supposed behavior by default, it is not the case on Netscape 7 either.




It effectively does not break *anything*

But, when you select a text, then go up with the *browser* scroll to click on the appropriate button,
What one get is
*the *edit* window scrolls at the top (so one have to scroll the edit window all the way down to find my edit again)
*it does not surround the text with the tag, it adds at the end of the selected text, the tag, with a comment by default (of the type, insert the text you want in bold there)

The idea behind it is nice, and it is great if that works for other browsers, but on my browser, it will be
* temporary informative in the sense it effectively show the type of tag which should be used

* but confusing to the newbie who will lost his placement in his edit window and will have to find it back
* useless as an edition tool, since it does not work in surrounding the selected text
* cluttering the space as any additional tool

In short, it will be more detrimental than beneficial.
Wiki must be kept simple.
This feature on Netscape will not make it simpler.
It will make more confusing, and it will clutter space without any reason.


I suggest that a browser check be added, and that on all browsers where it is not working, it be disabled.
It is *very bad* to let such bugs in an application, with the claim it is to help people when it will just do the opposite.
Please, keep it for other browsers (because it is a *neat* feature, but disable it in our browser).
Respect variety. Please do not punish minorities browsers users by degrading the way the application works for them.
And please no one answer that this browser is old, and should not exist at all.
That might have been true on my old (favorite) Opera 5, but Netscape 7 is recent.






On the contrary of many people here, I am not a computer-very-up-to-date person, so I think I have a fairly good feeling of what a newbie feels toward wiki editing.
I quite well remember my first edits.
My worse nightmare was that I left a space at the beginning of a sentence without noticing.

I edited the page about 15 times to try to understand why the police was so weird, and did not cut the text at the end of the sentence.
Newbies often do that I noticed.
Apart from that, I had few problems at the beginning.
People edited just behind me, and that was enough to get the hint very quickly.
Mostly, I had problems to remember, much later, how to do image: links, media: links and link to other pedias (now much more simple).
Add a pinch of having trouble remembering the &bot=1 and &redirect=no. That is it.
There is really no big deal in wiki editing. 



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