https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67086
Bug ID: 67086
Summary: VisualEditor: Creating a new link is unusable
Product: VisualEditor
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: NEW
Severity: normal
Priority: Unprioritized
Component: Editing Tools
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
CC: [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
We have an imho fundamentally broken model for inserting links. I don't know
why we show the Link tool in the toolbar when there is no selected text because
it's pretty much impossible.
The tool is optimised for adding a link to existing text (or typing the label
out first, which is unnatural for anyone who hasn't acquired it as a habit due
to this bug), and for changing the link target.
A few use cases:
* Add link in list
- Add item item (press return after the last item or create new list)
- User has a page or url he wants to link to
- Press "Link" tool
- Type target page name or url
- User wants to insert link with that label, or (more likely in case of an
external link) have the label be something that is not the link target.
* Add link while typing text
* Update mistake in text (e.g. text mentioning "born in the US" or "born in
1955" and the link and label of US/1955 should be another country or year).
I think the frequency at which one needs to only update the link label or link
target are significantly lower, but the other cases are certainly not edge
cases.
Here's a recording of me painfully trying to insert a link:
http://cl.ly/3s460Q442L3S
To this day I have not once been able to insert a link without running into a
bug that would've discouraged me as a user.
I thought I filed these as separate bugs at some point but I can't find them.
Issues encountered in the video:
1) Inserting a plain external link and then typing its label causes an
exception (a pawn appears; see video).
2) The link inspector seems to lack an intuitive way to apply the change.
During the video you can see me at various points being confused and eventually
pressing "Back" (or pressing Enter) to apply the change. Especially when
inserting a new link or changing an internal link to an external link (albeit
by accident) it's counter-intuitive to not see anything in the page or to
continue seeing a red link when I've already selected the value from the
dropdown menu.
I think when the user selects the value from the dropdown menu, that's when we
can apply the change (but keep the inspector open). An interface component like
this one that has no "Save" button and implies automatic saving should either
make sure the object being changed has no visual impact or make sure it is
applied live (And not suddenly when clicking away / blurring the inspector)
3) Adding a label (or rather, due to the lack of an input for the label, being
forced to change the implied label) is unusable due to lack of text selection
within the boundaries of the link (see video).
4) After the link is inserted, the link text is selected in the surface (the
link target in the inspector, which is still open, is also selected). It's not
clear whether typing will replace the label or the link target (see video).
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