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

[Elisabeth Bauer]

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Erik wrote:
> 
>>I'd be more interested in hearing ways to make it more intuitive 
>>than "turn it off for these browsers". 

I like the toolbar, but I think it should only appear on browsers where 
it works as supposed (and of course expert users should be able to 
switch it off in their prefs).

> The 2) toobar is fatally flawed; as I said before it is a word processor-like 
> toolbar that doesn't do what such a toolbar is expected to do. A static HTML 
> table outside the wiki text area of an edit window with just the basics:
> 
> Bold		''' ''''
> Italics 	'' ''
> Heading	== ==
> 
> Would be far better than the 2) toolbar. 

I think, this would clutter up the edit page too much. Most newbies 
grasp the "easy" editing options very quickly, problems appear if they 
want to do something more complicated - and this is stuff you can't 
present on the edit page directly.
My other concern is that with the present learning model, newbies learn 
far more than just "how do I make a text bold". they learn: with these 
chars I make the '''article title''' in the introduction bold.

> I see no need to confuse newbies of non-mainstream browsers when there is an 
> already existing link to editing help on every page. 

Sansculotte of the German wikipedia recently proposed an improved 
editing help. Instead of linking to one big page, he split it in several 
links to our help pages on specific topics:
* text formatting
* creating links
* inserting images
* tables
* formulas with TeX

He placed these links on the right of the text box (maybe it better goes 
in the navigation bar on the left side to save space). Ideally these 
links open in an extra, smaller window with just the relevant help text 
in it (please, no debates about "but they can use the back button").

In the long term we need IMO an own help-namespace with just the 
technical stuff in it. This should be available for download and import 
for other projects which use mediawiki.

greetings,
elian