I agree completely with Dave's comments and usage observations.
Brian cheblogs.com/ On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 12:13 +0100, Dave Johnson wrote: > Comments below... > > On 6/29/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Matt Raible wrote: > > > On 6/29/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Hopefully we'll hear from a wider set of people about this, but I am > > >> still wondering what the use case is for these edit links. How are you > > >> guys actually using them? You actually move back and forth between the > > >> authoring interface and your rendered weblog to edit entries? > > > > > > Yes, I use it all the time for that. It's a force of habit more than > > > anything. If I was smart, I'd use two tabs, but after posting > > > thousands of blog entries, habits form. ;-) > > We definitely got a very good reaction when we introduced those edit > links. They are very convenient. It's easy to browse old entries and > edit them when you find problems. You might arrive at an old entry > after browing somebody else's blog and finding a link back to your > blog, or after doing a google search or recieving a comment > notification -- it's very convenient to be able to simply click the > edit link to started editing. > > And there are other convenient things we could do like showing an > unapproved comment count for each entry and a link to the entry's > comment management page. > > > > That was basically what I was thinking but couldn't articulate it for > > some reason. It does seem more to me like this is a feature that some > > people may be used to because it's there, not because there is a real > > need for it. > > It's not just for preview. I use the edit link to go from old entries > to the edit interface and I used the in-page editor-menu to access the > bookmarks, settings, settings and other pages in the interface. I > also use the toggle-linkback links to change visibility of linkbacks. > Those things are a daily part of my Roller usage and I really do not > want to see them go away. > > We've already made the caching of logged-in pages optional; doesn't > that solve the problem that you are concerned about. > > > > I can see a reason why you might publish and entry and go immediately to > > your blog page to take a final look at it, then decide you need to make > > an edit, but aside from the past entry or 2 i don't see why you would > > first login to the authoring interface and then navigate to your weblog > > so that you can edit an entry that is multiple days/months old. Or why > > you would login to the authoring interface and then navigate to your > > blog so that you can use the "Website:Settings" link there instead of > > just using the link on the main menu page of the authoring interface. > > I spend time browing my blog, tweaking the them and moving back > and forth between the editor interface and my blog. I'd like be able to > do more of that not less. > > > > In any case, as an alternative I would probably propose that instead of > > linking back and forth between the fully published weblog pages and the > > authoring interface that we instead expand the capabilities of the > > preview servlet to meet this need instead. The preview servlet seems > > like the ideal venue for this exact situation and can offer *way* more > > benefits since we can do things with the preview servlet which we > > wouldn't be able to do on the real pages. > > > > For example, perhaps the preview servlet should render draft entries so > > that the weblog author can see how their entry will fit in with the > > entire rendered page, rather than using the fairly simple entry preview > > mode that we have now? This way you can get a true preview of the way > > the entry will look, but without having to publish it first. Also, > > maybe we can find a way to setup the preview servlet so that it can > > render using unsaved template changes as well. That would be extremely > > beneficial since you would be able to work on templates without having > > to affect how your rendered blog looks. And on and on. > > Yes! Absolutely. We should rip out the old preview feature and provide > a real preview that shows the blog entry as it will appear on the > blog. > > I think there are a lot of cool UI things we can do by knowing the > logged in state of the user when we render the blog so I strongly > object to removing that ability from the page models. > We need to make the UI easier to use, so let's not short-change users > just to save a little space in the cache. > > The blog itself is part of the user interface and I want to keep it that way. > > - Dave
