Flashy but useless "distraction free editor"

Also, do you guys realize you can hover over the top bar to get your formatting buttons. They nicely fade into view on hover.

(That might be a new feature that wasn’t available when this thread was started.)

@kato – yes the fade in/fade out tool bar has been there since the beginning. But the problem, as noted above, is that it has only a handful of the formatting buttons that are available in the non-full-screen editor.

Note that both the Full Screen and regular editor have keyboard shortcuts — find those by clicking the help button. [Is that what you were asking about with the “key command shortcut”?]

And one thing that might have been added more recently (given the comments above) is that Alt+, Alt-, and Alt0 can be used to widen, narrow and reset the width of the text area in Distraction Free mode.

And one thing that might have been added more recently (given the comments above) is that Alt+, Alt-, and Alt0 can be used to widen, narrow and reset the width of the text area in Distraction Free mode.

Alt+, Alt-, and Alt0 have no effect on the distraction free mode in WP 3.3.1 on my system.

Perhaps you are referring to the browser’s ability to zoom in and out? On my browser that’s Ctrl+, Ctrl-, and Ctrl0, and it doesn’t actually widen the text area in the sense of making it fix more text, which is what I want; it just makes it bigger.

@jikamens. No, I meant Alt and they work for me to, for instance, increase the number of words on a line. Firefox 9.0.1.

If you’re on a Mac it’s different from a PC with the alt/ctrl.

@converting2wp: All I can tell you is that I’ve tried Alt+, Alt-, and Alt0 on both Windows and Linux with Firefox, and they do nothing. Ctrl+, Ctrl-, and Ctrl0 do zoom in and out, but they do not increase the number of words on the line, and they are browser functionality, not WordPress functionality (look at the View | Zoom Firefox menu and you will see this). So I think either you are mistaken, or you have some other WordPress or plugin installed which is providing the behavior you describe.

One caveat: As I used Ctrl+ to zoom in on Windows, the number of words on one line of text did change slightly, presumably because of minor differences in font rendering at different resolutions, but it changed back when I zoomed in more, and certainly the number of words on the line did not consistently increase as I zoomed in, but rather remained approximately the same.

When you have the DFW open, do you see a question mark?

If you’re using the Visual Editor, it lists all the key commands you can use.

@jlkamens. Well, yes I understand the CTRL/+ CTRL/- CTRL/0 — I recommend the CTRL/+ to my mother at least once a month.

But all I can tell you is that I did use the ALT keys and saw the screen change as expected. I thought I’d check it again on WordPress.com == where there is the Help file that says the keys should work == but now I’m seeing just what you are: the ALT keys don’t seem to have any effect. I went back to the site (www.ads-software.com) where I did the original test a couple of days ago — and now they aren’t working there either. And there haven’t been any changes on the site in awhile.

I haven’t taken the time to search the WordPress.com support forums (yes, I know they are different) or to do a fresh clean install of WordPress from www.ads-software.com. Hmm…

So yes, @ipstenu, I found the ALT keys only because the help button/question mark. Thanks.

There does appear to be a quirk with its behaviour, but ALT+PLUS and ALT+MINUS are definitely intended to increase and decrease the editor width.

After some brief testing it would appear that the shortcuts don’t work at all when you first initiate the distraction-free editor, however if you click on the title the shortcuts begin working as intended.

Aha! Yes, indeed, they do work for me when I click in the title of the posting, but interestingly enough not when I’m focused on the body of the posting. The fact that they don’t work until you click on the title, as well as the fact that they don’t work when you are focused on the body, both seem like bugs to me. But I’m glad to know how to get this feature to work so I can finally get back something approximating why I liked the old full-screen editor.

Thanks! I posted a question over on wordpress.com to see if they agree this is a bug.

But I still think throwing away so many of the formatting buttons when switching to full screen is a bigger problem. If they’re going to be hidden while the focus is on the edit window, what’s the problem with having more of them there?

But I still think throwing away so many of the formatting buttons when switching to full screen is a bigger problem. If they’re going to be hidden while the focus is on the edit window, what’s the problem with having more of them there?

They’re available via command calls, like using GoogleDocs or other modern visual editors. This is the way of the future ??

Thanks! I hadn’t noticed the Google docs keyboard shortcuts (aka command calls?)

But Google docs still does have a full complement of editing buttons for those who prefer the GUI interface.

Everything old is new again (says she at age 62 when it’s a bit harder to cram more keyboard shortcuts into the brain than it was 20 years ago ??