Responsive-design Create Entries page, joining/leaving communities, subscribing/granting access, etc

[denise]

This code push included responsive redesigns of:

* the beta create entries page
* joining/leaving communities
* subscribing or granting access to people
* many of the site admin areas
* everything in the /tools directory
* and many more.

If you have problems with any of these pages, this is the place to report the problems!




There are several purposes behind our responsive site redesign. Aside from the boring technical ones (making it easier for us to maintain and troubleshoot the code, reducing browser incompatability, giving us more options in terms of designing, etc), the two big ones are:

* Improve the way the site looks and feels on small screens (such as on tablets and mobile devices) without worsening the experience for people using large screens (desktops and laptops).

* Improve the accessibility of the site: make it easier to access the site with screenreaders, interact with the site using alternate input devices, interact with the site using only the mouse or only the keyboard, etc.

This entry is for two things: reporting any actual display bugs or glitches with the pages (in your browser, whether on your computer or on your mobile device), and providing aesthetic feedback about the look and feel of the design.

If you're reporting display bugs or glitches: Please describe the glitch in as much detail as possible. Screenshots would be really helpful, especially if you're only seeing the glitch in one browser but not another, or only on your phone but not on your laptop. (You don't have to check for the glitch on multiple devices, but if you do, let us know which devices have the problem and which don't.)

If you have feedback specifically about the aesthetics or the look of the redesign (you think something needs more padding, want to suggest a different font/color/color combination/background/what-have-you, think something is in the wrong place, that kind of thing): Please be as specific as possible about what you think needs to be changed, or what's bugging you about the way things look. For instance, instead of saying "the header is so ugly and squished now, change it back", say "On my computer, the links in the header don't have enough space between them, so they look like they're running into each other."

(We know that people definitely have strong opinions about the way things should look -- that's why we're doing this incrementally -- but the most helpful feedback is the kind that's specific, concrete, and actionable.)

With all feedback, include the following:

* Which site skin you're using (you can find this on the Display tab of Manage Settings if you don't know)
* What browser and browser version you're seeing the problem in
* What operating system you're using
* What type of device you're using: laptop, desktop, phone, tablet, e-reader, etc. (And if phone/tablet/e-reader, what make and model.)
* What your display resolution is, and what your current browser size is. To check this if you aren't sure: go to whatsmy.browsersize.com and report the following numbers: Browser window width, browser window height, screen width, screen height.

If you're specifically reporting an issue with how the redesign works (or doesn't!) in your assistive technology setup, please also include:

* What assistive technology you're using (name of program, description of setup, etc)
* If it's software, the software version
* If it's workflow related (you find it difficult to navigate using keyboard-only navigation, for instance), a brief description of your workflow and what about the page is making it difficult

Comments

[turlough]

1) Why are the tags in the tag browser now ordered in columns instead of lines like they were before? It's extremely irritating having to scroll up and down all the time.

2) The modules doesn't stay put when I re-arrange them. Every time I open the page again they've reverted to what I presume are the default.

3) Why isn't it possible to put all the modules on top and the entry text at the bottom?

4) Why have the security and destination module become part of the entry text instead of being a module of their own? (They at least be at the TOP of the entry text, not at the bottom. It took me ages to even find them at first.) And has the ability to post as another account disappeared completely? It used to be part of the security/destination "module" but now I can't find it anywhere.

I'm using Firefox 35.0 on MacOSX 10.6.8. My site skin is Tropospherical Red. I'm using a desktop with a screen display resolution of 1680x1050 and my current browser window width is 1350 and window height 880.

[turlough]

One more thing:

Why are things like the header & footer and other site scheme elements bigger on the Create Entry page than they are on other site scheme pages? You can see it clearly in these screencaps from the Create Entry page and the Search page. Surely this can't be intended? It's very irritating in any case and I really hope you'll do something about it asap.

[turlough]

Something else weird I noticed today:

When you use the search function in the icon browser the selected icons show up all over the place instead of in neat rows - like this.

[fu]

Is it any better right now?

[turlough]

I'm afraid not. Some of the icons have moved from one row to another compared to how it looked before, but they're still showing up all over the place.

[fu]

Thanks for that. Hmmm. So I just want to check something if you don't mind -- if you temporarily turn off meta text does that get any better?

[turlough]

Oh yes, now they form up in neat little row like they should.

[fu]

Gotcha, then I know where to concentrate, thanks.

[fu]

1) The tags in the tag browser were reordered for scannability, according to user comments from earlier beta

2) My bad, that shouldn't have been the case, but fixed now.

3) New possibilities add complexity. Right now we're dealing with three columns * two different textarea configurations * large/medium/small screens; the complexity and number of things you have to deal with goes up geometrically with each new possibility.

People have asked us before for the ability to put modules above the entry text, and we did carefully consider it, but ultimately we decided that would be too much added complexity on a page that was already very complex with a lot of choices that could be made

4a) Merging those let us get rid of two modules that basically we always want to be available, and reduced some of the feeling of overwhelming choice on the page.

4b) We did get rid of that, yes. We gathered statistics over a few months to see how people were using the page, and found that 0.001% of users used altlogin while logged in as another account. It's still possible to post while logged out, just not as account B while logged into account A.

The other problem with that existing option was that posting as one account when logged into another account wouldn't let you set any options for the post, like icons or tags, so people weren't using it because they wanted to set those things. We've talked a lot about how to connect up accounts so you can post or comment as one account while you're logged into another of your accounts and have access to all of those options, and it is something we do intend to do in the future, but there's a lot of design problems we haven't been able to solve well enough yet.

[turlough]

1) Possibly more scannable for the people who only have a few icons. For those like me who have A LOT it's very unveildy to have to scroll up and down all the time.

And related to that, I can see from comments below that you've tried to fix the mis-alignment between checkbox and tag. Many of mine are still horribly misaligned though.

4b) That's too bad. I only used it for one mod account but it was really handy to have. And no, you couldn't set icons but tags always worked for me.

[denise]

To add on to what fu said about the altlogin option (the thing that let you post as one account while logged into another account) -- if you're like me and you need to bounce accounts frequently, the best solution I've found for Firefox is an extension called "Cookieswap". It takes a bit of setup -- you have to make several profiles and log into a different account in each of them -- but once you have it set up, you can open a new tab, switch your cookie profile from your default profile to your profile that has Account X logged in instead, and load the update page as Account X. It works really well for me!

[turlough]

Thanks for the info!