Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/Flow

phab:T257391

Wow, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Reply 2.0 is live now.

One thing that I meant to mention from the mockups but think I neglected was the [ B I ] buttons instead of the [ A ˅ ] dropdown that's in VE and SD. Really happy to see [ A ˅ ] in the release version. :) (I'm not fussed whether bold and italic get their own buttons or appear on a submenu, but I want to be able to access all the other formatting like small, code, etc.)

I had a small difficulty on iOS where I selected some text in the top line, and the native context menu obscured the toolbar. There was no way to make it disappear or scroll it out of the way, so I inserted a couple of temporary newlines to move the text down. Short of putting the toolbar below, which is rather drastic, I don't see an easy design fix for that.

Just noticed, is the @-dropdown not working in Source mode?

...but I want to be able to access all the other formatting like small, code, etc.)

@Pelagic, can you share a bit more here? Were there tools you were expecting to see that were not present within the A ˅ dropdown of the visual mode's toolbar?

I had a small difficulty on iOS where I selected some text in the top line, and the native context menu obscured the toolbar.

Are you able to share a screenshot here? (I'm assuming you were accessing a talk page on mobile, via the desktop site?)

Just noticed, is the @-dropdown not working in Source mode?

That's correct. Would it be accurate for me to assume you expect all of the tools that are available in the tool's visual mode to be available in the source mode as well?

For context, we intentionally waited on adding any tools to the source mode until we had heard from more experienced contributors (like you!) which tools they would value having access to.

Now that you've said something, we have reason to start this ticket: phab:T257391

Wow, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Reply 2.0 is live now.

We hope you continue to share things you noticed :)

• Were there tools you were expecting to see that were not present within the A ˅ dropdown— no, the A drop-down covers the common ones, I was just trying to say I'm glad to have [ A ˅ ] in addition to [ B ][ I ]. After bold and italic, I think small and code would get the most use on talk pages.
• Aside: for the distinction between HTML <b> <i> (as in Wikitext) versus <strong> <em> (as in a some Markdown parsers, and specs like CommonMark) ... sigh. I'd like a button to insert <em></em> instead of tapping num-symb-<-alpha-e-m-num-symb->-alpha etc., but I doubt others would care for it. And that only makes sense in source mode rather than visual anyway. I just saw that em text shows as "italic" in the toolbar here if I cycle from source to visual.
• Are you able to share a screenshot here? I think I took a screenshot. I'll look and dig it up, or else re-create (I'm on laptop rather than iPad at the moment). Am I able to share it here in Structured Discussions? I guess I just upload it to mw-wiki and post a link to the File: page?
• I'm assuming you were accessing a talk page on mobile, via the desktop site?Yes. Apart from all the other reasons to use desktop-web-on-mobile-device, I would switch from mobile to desktop just to use the Reply tool. (You can quote me on that. ;) ) If there's any CSS or JS trick I can use to make it available on mobile/Minerva, please let me know!
• Regarding the @-tool in source mode, I wasn't thinking of the toolbar button but just the ability to type @ as in the original demo. The @-demo predated the visual mode, so I was surprised when that didn't make it to production in this iteration. I'd like a mention button, though, for discoverability (or alternately a "hints" button as discussed elsewhere).
  • I probably said this somewhere already, but when section-editing in source mode, it's easy to copy-paste the username, or the whole userpage-link, from above (if it's not too far above). But in Reply mode, we don't have access to the rest of the page source. Copying the user-page's URL, trimming it, and changing underscores to spaces is a complete pain, as is hand-typing a long username. I would say the username helper is the most important "extra" for Reply. Without it, I might switch to visual, or if I was one of the many who really don't like visual, just not use Reply at all.
• you expect all of the tools that are available in the tool's visual mode to be available in the source mode as well?Not expect; I thought that was off the table from the start. As a frequent tablet user, I'd like to have formatting tools even in source mode, because some of our formatting characters are cumbersome to type on a touch-screen keyboard.
  • For example: to produce ''' on iOS I need to press-hold-release the ,!' key three times; to make < and switch back to alphabetic I need either four taps or tap-drag-tap; [[ is four taps or tap-drag-drag; and so on. Also, touchscreen keyboards generally don't have modifier keys, so Ctrl+B or Ctrl+Shft+6 aren't possible.
  • With a physical keyboard I'm a fiend for key combos that help me avoid taking my hands off to use a pointing device, so I'd use the toolbar a lot less, but I do hit the toolbar menu to look-up keyboard shortcuts. I watch computer users all the time grab the mouse when they could have just used Enter or Tab, etc., so I may be atypical.
• which tools they would valueA good thing about Reply being an alternative to section editing, rather than a replacement, is that it doesn't have to do everything. You want syntax highlighting or tables? Section-edit! Could you run a survey to discover preferences?

Umm, does mw-wiki not have an equivalent to w:en:Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard or w:en:Upload file? Oh I found Special:Upload mentioned at Manual:Configuring file uploads, but one needs to be an admin or an uploader. Guess I’ll need to put the screenshot on Commons or in Phab.

Okay it’s at phab:F31935493.

EDIT: Contrived examples with selection in top or second line:– phab:F31936043, phab:F31936052, phab:F31936053.

Pelagic, is this situation improved (at all) with the rearranged toolbar? (I'm assuming the answer is 'no'.)