Hello all,
First of all, thank you for your replays and please forgive my short absence....I was left without electricity and Internet for a few days because a short storm.
Sergiu has given me the task to implement a fullscreen editing mode, similar to WYSIWYG or WIKI and I thought about it and found several solutions,
each one with advantages and disadvantages.
I will present them now and I would like to receive some feedback from you, to know which of the solutions
(or maybe other solution if none of mines is good enough) will be better.
Ideeas for a new way of editing in xwiki (like WYSIWYG and WIKI in FULLSCREEN)
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Ideea no. 1: A button in the editor itself, like in FCK editor
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Advantages:
1. it doesn't need any other graphical implementation in xwiki (like a new tab for instance), because xwiki has already 2 rows of tabs
2. with a good, expressive icon it can be easily spotted by the user
3. it's very easy and intuitive to use, even for a non-initiated user (specially with a tooltip); the user can use tabs to move to the button, if he doesn't have a mouse
4. it can appear anywhere the editor toolbar is needed, therefore allowing full editing for all those cases (not only for wysiwyg and wiki...)
5. can be more impressive with a nice transition animation
6. it covers all the area in xwiki (no elements visible like panels, header etc, otherwise it will not be fullscreen editing, it will be just like
the existing WYSIWYG editing mode)
7. by reducing the size of the textarea, the user is brough back to normal wysiwyg editor and has access to other elements in xwiki...like panels...
just like in the existing editing mode.
Disadvantages:
1. it's depedent of the editor toolbar
2. in order to save or cancel or save and continue, the user has to reduce the size by pressing the same button and then press the submit button(save, cancel...)
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Ideea no. 2: Two small buttons, in the corner of both WYSIWYG and WIKI editor, just like in Gmail (composing), which opens a new fullscreen window with
the editor, the textarea and save, cancel...buttons
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Advantages:
1. the user can have acces to other xwiki elements (panels...) in the parent window
2. independent of the editor itself
3. pretty intuitive to use
Disadvantages:
1. when the new window is opened, the parent window must be redirected to the view mode -> reloading the page
2. if the user clicks cancel, to edit again he must press Edit (WYSIWYG or WIKI) and then press the little button on the tab -> 2 reloadings
3. what happens if the user opens twice the same editor? the modifications from one must be seen in all other open editor -> quite difficult to implement
4. harder to implement
5. a button like this can be placed in each tab (wysiswyg and wiki) and it a new tab is added in xwiki which supports full screen editing, the button
has to be place in it too.
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Ideea no. 3: Resizable textarea
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Advantages:
1. the user can resize the textarea as much as he wants, not necessarily fullscreen
2. pretty easy to use, but only if the user has a mouse to drag the textarea
Disadvantages:
1. the resizing of the textarea can damage the xwiki interface (all the page has to be resized) -> pretty nasty distorsions
2. the user will have to scroll down a lot to see the footer if the textarea is resized a lot.
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Ideea no. 4: Like the no. 1 except that when pressed, the button will open a floating pane with a nice animation, that will cover about 60% -70% of the page
which will contain only a resizable textarea, the editor and the save, cance,..buttons, while the rest of the page will be covered by a translucent blocking background (similar to those which appear when you have to fill in the username and password in order to access something).
When the user finishes editing and presses one of the buttons, the panel closes and the text is put back in the tab from which the editor button was pressed
(i.e wysiwyg or wiki or other tab that has the editor)
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Advantages:
1. advantages of no. 1 and the fact that will be more spectaculous (with a nice effect)
Disadvantages:
1. same as no. 1 (dependent of editor etc..)
So, these are my ideas for now... I would like to know which seems more appealing to you and also, if you have other opinions, ideeas...
Thanks,
Evelina Slatineanu
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