[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] WYSIWYG - Get out of inline style when hitting Return
*Hi Devs,* *I'm coming back from a meeting with a corporate XWiki user.* *The project manager there reported a "bug" to me: when hitting Return while at the end of the link, she was still in the link. The item she created after hitting return was a title and due to style settings she couldn't see it was still a link. Then she hit Return again and after her title the text was still a link. She felt confused and didn't understand why the link was still there.* *This is due to the fact that right now, when the caret is at the end of an element with an inline style applied, it keeps applying that style upon hitting Return. This applies to bold, italics, underlined, strikethrough, color, background color and links (all inline elements). I've talked about this with Anca a number of times, saying that it was wrong for links to be kept when hitting enter (since users very rarely want links that span 2 paragraphs). Her answer was that all inline styles should be treated the same for technical reasons.* *After giving it more thought and gathering feedback from our project managers it appears that the use case of willing the current inline style to be kept after hitting Return is actually less frequent than wanting the new line to be "clean". Moreover, it's extremely confusing for users when the link is kept.* *Thus I'd like to suggest that hitting Return (= generating a new paragraph) should get the caret out of the current inline style in the WYSIWYG editor. Here are a couple more reasons why I believe this to be the best option:* - There are shortcuts available in the WYSIWYG for most inline styles (CTRL-B, CTRL-I) thus it's easy for the user to activate it again on a new line - It's very easy to select a wide area of text with the mouse and then apply an inline style to it, thus styling can conveniently be done after the actual writing - Hitting SHIFT-Return will keep the user in the same paragraph and thus will keep the current inline styles - It's very rare that users want to apply an inline style to several paragraphs in a row since bold, italics are most often used to create contrast with surrounding text To summarize, I think hitting Return should generate "virgin" new lines. The only thing that should be kept is the alignment. WDYT? Guillaume -- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
Hi Guillaume, Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
*Hi Devs,*
*I'm coming back from a meeting with a corporate XWiki user.*
*The project manager there reported a "bug" to me: when hitting Return while at the end of the link, she was still in the link. The item she created after hitting return was a title and due to style settings she couldn't see it was still a link. Then she hit Return again and after her title the text
"due to style settings" -> isn't this the real issue?
was still a link. She felt confused and didn't understand why the link was still there.*
*This is due to the fact that right now, when the caret is at the end of an element with an inline style applied, it keeps applying that style upon hitting Return. This applies to bold, italics, underlined, strikethrough, color, background color and links (all inline elements). I've talked about this with Anca a number of times, saying that it was wrong for links to be kept when hitting enter (since users very rarely want links that span 2 paragraphs). Her answer was that all inline styles should be treated the same for technical reasons.*
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
*After giving it more thought and gathering feedback from our project managers it appears that the use case of willing the current inline style to be kept after hitting Return is actually less frequent than wanting the new line to be "clean". Moreover, it's extremely confusing for users when the link is kept.*
*Thus I'd like to suggest that hitting Return (= generating a new paragraph) should get the caret out of the current inline style in the WYSIWYG editor. Here are a couple more reasons why I believe this to be the best option:*
- There are shortcuts available in the WYSIWYG for most inline styles (CTRL-B, CTRL-I) thus it's easy for the user to activate it again on a new line
It's hard to have shortcuts for a specific font name, font size, font color or highlight color.
- It's very easy to select a wide area of text with the mouse and then apply an inline style to it, thus styling can conveniently be done after the actual writing
Then how difficult it is to choose ***Remove Link*** from the link menu when the caret is inside a link?
- Hitting SHIFT-Return will keep the user in the same paragraph and thus will keep the current inline styles - It's very rare that users want to apply an inline style to several paragraphs in a row since bold, italics are most often used to create contrast with surrounding text
To summarize, I think hitting Return should generate "virgin" new lines. The only thing that should be kept is the alignment.
I'm pretty sure others will scream because their nice style is lost when they move to a new paragraph. Anyway, I'm going to implement it if others think too that Open Office does it wrong. Marius
WDYT?
Guillaume
Hi Marius, On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Guillaume,
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
*Hi Devs,*
*I'm coming back from a meeting with a corporate XWiki user.*
*The project manager there reported a "bug" to me: when hitting Return while at the end of the link, she was still in the link. The item she created after hitting return was a title and due to style settings she couldn't see it was still a link. Then she hit Return again and after her title the text
"due to style settings" -> isn't this the real issue?
No. She didn't expect the link to be carried over when hitting Return. The style issue is simply an aggravating factor.
was still a link. She felt confused and didn't understand why the link was
still there.*
*This is due to the fact that right now, when the caret is at the end of an element with an inline style applied, it keeps applying that style upon hitting Return. This applies to bold, italics, underlined, strikethrough, color, background color and links (all inline elements). I've talked about this with Anca a number of times, saying that it was wrong for links to be kept when hitting enter (since users very rarely want links that span 2 paragraphs). Her answer was that all inline styles should be treated the same for technical reasons.*
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
I have no idea. What I know is that our users are complaining about the current behavior. My initial suggestion was that links should be treated differently from inline styles such as bold or italics. This is what Google Docs does. Anca was strongly against it for conceptual - "all inline items should act in the same way" - and technical - "they currently share the same behavior, it makes more code to write" - reasons. This is still the solution I would favor. If however it can't be done, we have to examine the next best choice. This is why I'm proposing we don't carry over any inline style upon hitting Return.
*After giving it more thought and gathering feedback from our project managers it appears that the use case of willing the current inline style to be kept after hitting Return is actually less frequent than wanting the new line to be "clean". Moreover, it's extremely confusing for users when the link is kept.*
*Thus I'd like to suggest that hitting Return (= generating a new paragraph) should get the caret out of the current inline style in the WYSIWYG editor. Here are a couple more reasons why I believe this to be the best option:*
- There are shortcuts available in the WYSIWYG for most inline styles (CTRL-B, CTRL-I) thus it's easy for the user to activate it again on a new line
It's hard to have shortcuts for a specific font name, font size, font color or highlight color.
- It's very easy to select a wide area of text with the mouse and then apply an inline style to it, thus styling can conveniently be done after the actual writing
Then how difficult it is to choose ***Remove Link*** from the link menu when the caret is inside a link?
The actual issue takes place when the caret is at the very end of the link. The link is carried over to the next line without a visual clue (whereas when bold is carried over the bold button in the toolbar is shown as selected).
From all the cases I saw, the user model / expectation when hitting Return while the caret is at the end of a link is that the link should NOT be carried over. Going to the link menu to remove the link doesn't seem intuitive to our users when they start using the editor. If we want to make our editor easier to use for the majority of our users, links should not be carried over when hitting Return. It's not my choice, simply a fact derived from observation.
If you think I'm wrong, please provide us with a compelling use case where the user wants his / her link to be carried over after hitting Return.
- Hitting SHIFT-Return will keep the user in the same paragraph and thus will keep the current inline styles - It's very rare that users want to apply an inline style to several paragraphs in a row since bold, italics are most often used to create contrast with surrounding text
To summarize, I think hitting Return should generate "virgin" new lines. The only thing that should be kept is the alignment.
I'm pretty sure others will scream because their nice style is lost when they move to a new paragraph. Anyway, I'm going to implement it if others think too that Open Office does it wrong.
As I stated it above, I think differentiating the behavior of links vs bold and other inline styles would be our best option. Having all styles not carried over is a second-rank optimum, but it's still better than the current one. What's your opinion from a technical point of view? Guillaume
Marius
WDYT?
Guillaume
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Hi Guillaume,
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
*Hi Devs,*
*I'm coming back from a meeting with a corporate XWiki user.*
*The project manager there reported a "bug" to me: when hitting Return while at the end of the link, she was still in the link. The item she created after hitting return was a title and due to style settings she couldn't see it was still a link. Then she hit Return again and after her title the text
"due to style settings" -> isn't this the real issue?
was still a link. She felt confused and didn't understand why the link was still there.*
*This is due to the fact that right now, when the caret is at the end of an element with an inline style applied, it keeps applying that style upon hitting Return. This applies to bold, italics, underlined, strikethrough, color, background color and links (all inline elements). I've talked about this with Anca a number of times, saying that it was wrong for links to be kept when hitting enter (since users very rarely want links that span 2 paragraphs). Her answer was that all inline styles should be treated the same for technical reasons.*
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
*After giving it more thought and gathering feedback from our project managers it appears that the use case of willing the current inline style to be kept after hitting Return is actually less frequent than wanting the new line to be "clean". Moreover, it's extremely confusing for users when the link is kept.*
*Thus I'd like to suggest that hitting Return (= generating a new paragraph) should get the caret out of the current inline style in the WYSIWYG editor. Here are a couple more reasons why I believe this to be the best option:*
- There are shortcuts available in the WYSIWYG for most inline styles (CTRL-B, CTRL-I) thus it's easy for the user to activate it again on a new line
It's hard to have shortcuts for a specific font name, font size, font color or highlight color.
Somewhere around here I see the actual issue: some inline formatting / styles are to be removed upon enter, some not. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, link are OK to be removed for the reasons G mentioned. Font size, font family or color, maybe not (people probably set a font to be used for the whole document or at least until they specify otherwise). Also this desire to remove or preserve formatting can be contextual (I think I've had discussions before where users wanted something to happen and reported as bug depending on how they felt at that moment). While I agree that there are rare use-cases when a user would want to preserve a link on multiple lines, _we need to have a rule_: I don't think it's ok that some styles are removed (which? on what criteria?) and some are not (which? on what criteria?) Anca
- It's very easy to select a wide area of text with the mouse and then apply an inline style to it, thus styling can conveniently be done after the actual writing
Then how difficult it is to choose ***Remove Link*** from the link menu when the caret is inside a link?
- Hitting SHIFT-Return will keep the user in the same paragraph and thus will keep the current inline styles - It's very rare that users want to apply an inline style to several paragraphs in a row since bold, italics are most often used to create contrast with surrounding text
To summarize, I think hitting Return should generate "virgin" new lines. The only thing that should be kept is the alignment.
I'm pretty sure others will scream because their nice style is lost when they move to a new paragraph. Anyway, I'm going to implement it if others think too that Open Office does it wrong.
Marius
WDYT?
Guillaume
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume, Open Office users are actually complaining: e.g. 1: "When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL. After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...] I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text." source:http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093 e.g. 2: "The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems to be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link." Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984 These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue. -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Proposal-WYSIWYG-Get-out-of-inline-style-when-hitting-R... Sent from the XWiki- Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Hi Silvia, Silvia Rusu wrote:
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume,
Open Office users are actually complaining:
e.g. 1:
"When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL.
After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...]
I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text."
source:http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093
The solution I found, after a while, was to choose "Clear formatting" from the style drop down.. not intuitive at all. Our editor has a Link menu with a Remove Link entry. It shouldn't be that hard for the user to find it. OK, the user doesn't know if the caret is inside the link after he presses Enter, but that's because the Remove Link feature was moved from the tool bar, where it was enabled or disabled depending on the context.
e.g. 2:
"The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems to be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link."
Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984
These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue.
Point taken. Can you or Guillaume open a JIRA issue? * Enter at the start/end of a link moves the caret before/after the link and then creates a new paragraph. * Enter in the middle of a link breaks the link in two. * The rest of the in-line styles (including bold, italic etc.) are preserved on the new paragraph * Shift+Enter acts as it does now: simply inserts a line break This is the observed behavior of MS Word 2007. Thanks, Marius
Hi, On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Silvia,
Silvia Rusu wrote:
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume,
Open Office users are actually complaining:
e.g. 1:
"When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL.
After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...]
I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text."
source:
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093
The solution I found, after a while, was to choose "Clear formatting" from the style drop down.. not intuitive at all.
Our editor has a Link menu with a Remove Link entry. It shouldn't be that hard for the user to find it.
OK, the user doesn't know if the caret is inside the link after he presses Enter, but that's because the Remove Link feature was moved from the tool bar, where it was enabled or disabled depending on the context.
e.g. 2:
"The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems
to
be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link."
Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984
These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue.
Point taken. Can you or Guillaume open a JIRA issue?
* Enter at the start/end of a link moves the caret before/after the link and then creates a new paragraph. * Enter in the middle of a link breaks the link in two. * The rest of the in-line styles (including bold, italic etc.) are preserved on the new paragraph * Shift+Enter acts as it does now: simply inserts a line break
This is the observed behavior of MS Word 2007.
Done, see http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-4193 Thanks Marius :-) Guillaume
Thanks, Marius
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Silvia,
Silvia Rusu wrote:
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume,
Open Office users are actually complaining:
e.g. 1:
"When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL.
After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...]
I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text."
source: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093
The solution I found, after a while, was to choose "Clear formatting" from the style drop down.. not intuitive at all.
Our editor has a Link menu with a Remove Link entry. It shouldn't be that hard for the user to find it.
OK, the user doesn't know if the caret is inside the link after he presses Enter, but that's because the Remove Link feature was moved from the tool bar, where it was enabled or disabled depending on the context.
e.g. 2:
"The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems to be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link."
Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984
These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue. Point taken. Can you or Guillaume open a JIRA issue?
* Enter at the start/end of a link moves the caret before/after the link and then creates a new paragraph. * Enter in the middle of a link breaks the link in two. * The rest of the in-line styles (including bold, italic etc.) are preserved on the new paragraph * Shift+Enter acts as it does now: simply inserts a line break
This is the observed behavior of MS Word 2007.
I'm slightly lost, isn't that the very old issue we've been so arguing about for a while: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-3802 ? and I remember Marius' very strong position on keeping the current behaviour (are we talking about the same thing?). How about, in this context, hitting enter at the beginning / end of a bold, italic, strikethrough, etc? Is this rule only for links or for any other styling? (I agree that it's more annoying for links then for all others but this means adding a special rule for links...) Happy coding, Anca
Thanks Marius :-)
Guillaume
Thanks, Marius
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi Anca, On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Anca Paula Luca <[email protected]>wrote:
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Silvia,
Silvia Rusu wrote:
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume,
Open Office users are actually complaining:
e.g. 1:
"When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL.
After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...]
I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text."
source: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093
The solution I found, after a while, was to choose "Clear formatting" from the style drop down.. not intuitive at all.
Our editor has a Link menu with a Remove Link entry. It shouldn't be that hard for the user to find it.
OK, the user doesn't know if the caret is inside the link after he presses Enter, but that's because the Remove Link feature was moved from the tool bar, where it was enabled or disabled depending on the context.
e.g. 2:
"The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems to be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link."
Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984
These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue. Point taken. Can you or Guillaume open a JIRA issue?
* Enter at the start/end of a link moves the caret before/after the link and then creates a new paragraph. * Enter in the middle of a link breaks the link in two. * The rest of the in-line styles (including bold, italic etc.) are preserved on the new paragraph * Shift+Enter acts as it does now: simply inserts a line break
This is the observed behavior of MS Word 2007.
I'm slightly lost, isn't that the very old issue we've been so arguing about for a while: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-3802 ? and I remember Marius' very strong position on keeping the current behaviour (are we talking about the same thing?).
Yes, XWIKI-3802 is one of the symptoms of an issue that XWIKI-4193 would fix.
How about, in this context, hitting enter at the beginning / end of a bold, italic, strikethrough, etc? Is this rule only for links or for any other styling? (I agree that it's more annoying for links then for all others but this means adding a special rule for links...)
That's why at first I suggested changing the rule for all inline styles. However Marius rightly suggested that we change it only for links. Links are semantically different from styles, thus have to be treated differently through a specific rule. Guillaume
Happy coding, Anca
Thanks Marius :-)
Guillaume
Thanks, Marius
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
Hi Anca, Anca Paula Luca wrote:
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi Silvia,
Silvia Rusu wrote:
Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Open Office Writer does the same, and not for technical reasons, I guess. Are their users complaining?
Hi Marius & Guillaume,
Open Office users are actually complaining:
e.g. 1:
"When I paste a URL into a Writer document, it turns it into a link -- blue, underlined, control + click to open URL.
After I paste a URL, how do I type text after it, and not make the new text I type also be part of the link? [...]
I can't figure out how to "turn off" the hyperlink and return to typing normal text."
source: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=186093
The solution I found, after a while, was to choose "Clear formatting" from the style drop down.. not intuitive at all.
Our editor has a Link menu with a Remove Link entry. It shouldn't be that hard for the user to find it.
OK, the user doesn't know if the caret is inside the link after he presses Enter, but that's because the Remove Link feature was moved from the tool bar, where it was enabled or disabled depending on the context.
e.g. 2:
"The bigger problem is that an entire section of text on the page seems to be hyperlinked for some reason. It's just ordinary text. But everything I type in this one area on the document turns into a link."
Source: http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=984
These are just a couple of examples I found right away, but I am sure there are other people confused about this issue. Point taken. Can you or Guillaume open a JIRA issue?
* Enter at the start/end of a link moves the caret before/after the link and then creates a new paragraph. * Enter in the middle of a link breaks the link in two. * The rest of the in-line styles (including bold, italic etc.) are preserved on the new paragraph * Shift+Enter acts as it does now: simply inserts a line break
This is the observed behavior of MS Word 2007.
I'm slightly lost, isn't that the very old issue we've been so arguing about for a while: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-3802 ?
It is *possible* to continue adding content if there is a link object at the bottom of the page. There is the Remove Link feature which works, right? So there's no such bug. Here we're talking about an improvement. I've updated XWIKI-4193 accordingly.
and I remember Marius' very strong position on keeping the current behaviour (are we talking about the same thing?).
I'm still strongly in favor of the current behavior but the users don't find it natural. Marius
How about, in this context, hitting enter at the beginning / end of a bold, italic, strikethrough, etc? Is this rule only for links or for any other styling? (I agree that it's more annoying for links then for all others but this means adding a special rule for links...)
Happy coding, Anca
Thanks Marius :-)
Guillaume
Thanks, Marius
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
participants (4)
-
Anca Paula Luca -
Guillaume Lerouge -
Marius Dumitru Florea -
Silvia Rusu