MKSnMKS

Hello Marius L.J. ,

this sounds interesting, as you say it could be built on top of Gutenburg.
Can this be added to a to-do list?
and possibly be available to Gutenburg users in and ‘advanced user ode’
Thank you Treebeard for your description and good ideas.

Just a note ;

Any ‘system’ (e.g. wordpress) behavior that needs to be explained in a forum,
needs to have that explanation inserted into the the ‘system’.

This way, the need for additional explanation, that is external to the ‘system’, is reduced/removed.

A system should at least be self explanatory, and better be self evident so that explanation is not needed.

This “+” button location/relocation behavior is odd/unconventional/non-intuitive and hopefully will not become permanent.
ironfish2, you are quite correct, and your comments are thoughtful.

But
if the developers wish to continue with this present behavior of the “+” icon,
then,
could they please make use of a UI visual indicator that helps ‘convey a location of origin’,
which is the swish type effect, which in this case would show a (transparent) “+” icon moved (with trailing tail) from the location at the left of Title up toward the top left location.
or
use a coloured line to indicate a ‘connection’ between the two locations of the “+” icon.

Re the “+” icon at the top left (which is not the main issue of this topic),
there is very good commentary on UI at
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/so-many-issues-with-gutenberg-right-off-the-start/

This UI issue needs to be be fixed, rather than excused.

Hello pionernik,

Thank you for taking your time to check out this plugin and for your feedback.

Hello Marius L. J. ,
Is it possible to have a debug system in the Beta version that can automatically collect (at least some) faults?

Thanks

I had a similar problem, which was solved by disabling a “pagebuilder” plugin.
There can also be similar problems due to css sheets of same names, or parameters of same names, being held residually in caching systems on wordpress, in php, on the server, in CDNs along the way, and the users browser.

Hello williamhennessy and Samuel Wood (Otto),

1) For williamhennessy ;

Thank you for your feedback, on your experience of being introduced to the Gutenburg editor, and for volunteering your time to both try it out and report your feedback.
You have reported your experience in a “qualitative” fashion, which conveys your impression or lack of being impressed.

For the benefit of the developers, it would be additionally helpful to be provided with some “quantitative” information, as to what some/all of the problems were.
Ideally, they would be interested a full specific description, that would allow them to replicate the fault/situation, but not all users can do this, and any hint at a problem is better than nothing. So even if you can supply bullet points or a list of some of the problems, then that would help direct attention to where the problems might be, and therefore (from the developers’ angle) what code might be causing it.

2) For Samuel Wood (Otto)
a) As you have pointed out, Gutenburg has been in development for 2 years, and that for the first year you (too) did not like it.
The Gutenburg plugin mentions that the wordpress editor had been the same for about 10 years.
If ‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’,
then the original editor would be considered the best – which is clearly not the opinion of the team (ITO) that thinks a new (Gutenburg) editor needs to be created.

b) Re

Yeah, it’s missing some minor pieces, sure. But I can write in this, whereas I have never liked writing in the existing TinyMCE editor. As in, I would write in a text editor, paste it into the WordPress Visual editor, and then do the formatting and editing phase of things.

With this, I can type into it from scratch and create content. That’s kinda new for me. So, yeah. I’m a hard sell, but this is good, IMO. Not perfect, but a decent base

“minor pieces” – the pieces that you think are missing, are not necessarily the same pieces that williamhennessy thinks is missing (though he is talking about problematic features rather than omitted features. Nor does williamhennessy seem to regard the problems as “minor” as he has indicated he will not be using this editor (at least for 6 months).
The rest of these two paragraphs seems to be saying “in your opinion, you find this editor more suitable for your needs than the previous editor”. It is good that you have experienced an improvement in the usability of wordpress as a result of Gutenburg editor. And it is also good that you find it suitable enough for your use. This is your experience of it and your opinion.
williamhennessy started this topic to convey his experience (in presently low resolution of information content), and express his opinion. The main difference between the two opinions seems to be that williamhennessy sets a higher bar for usability than you do, and that’s ok for him, and that ok for you. You are both more happy with the systems you are using at the moment. You may be keen to express your own opinion of how good Gutenburg is, as ardently as you wish in a topic that you start.

c) Re

I’ll give you a problem I found. It doesn’t have good block nesting.

and the rest of the paragraph.
It would be helpful to supply the link to where you have reported this problem to Gutenburg, so it can serve as a good example on how to more accurately describe problems/issues/bugs/etc.
If you have not yet reported this problem you have experienced, then please do report it in a new topic, to help speed up the development of Gutenburg.

d) I join with you, in encouraging williamhennessy to provide as much information as he is willing to, to help develop Gutenburg. And this probably means encouraging him to be “willing”.

I look forward to hearing more from both of you, and hope to explore what some of the discouraging/dis-incentivizing problems are.

Thank you all

Hello Marius L.J. ,

1) The position of the “+” icon this topic is about ;
The “+” icon I saw was just below the “Title” position.
From the new user experience, the intuition was to visually follow the main prompting action, which was to look at the “Title” location, because that is the largest font on the whole page (indicating implied importance).

The “+” icon was right next door to that on its left.

2) Re – additional comment from appleisle about “+” icon top left ;
Having found it at the left of the “Title”, it was therefore expectable to find it there again (for constancy). It became non-visible even though it remained there (it would show up if hovered over).
It was only some time later, after the first block was added, that it appeared at top left.

3) UI layout design ;
It seems like the UI design is not yet decided on whether this should be a function that floats around the UI, is attached to the block editor, or attached to the top bar. Any of these is possible, and makes sense – what the problem is is that it changed location in a non-inuitive way without warning.
It might be possible to let the user control how this icon behaves, but in any case, “constancy/consistency of behavior” of the UI is helpful.

Thanks

I prefer to be active on this WP site, so please feel free to copy and paste across to where ever you think will be to good use.

I can understand that developers like to use GIT because of its version handling features. But this is not a feature that most users are much interested in. The GIT service is not at the www.ads-software.com site (which it could be, but is not).

In considering the typical user who might be thinking about joining the testing, having to learn a new site, is a deterent.
In my case, I give feedback on many items, but if I were to do that on each item’s own website, then I wouldn’t bother due to managing all the bookmarks which would be required (especially if they don’t have feedback buttons which save all that effort).

If developers are keen to collect feedback, then as broad a capture net as practically possible is desirable – it just depends what methods are considered to be “practical”.

Thank you

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This site also has email notifications.

Thank you

Hello Marius L.J. ,

Thank you for explaining what it does.
There is however a difference between some (thing/program/website) being (technically) capable of doing something, compared to it being able to be activated by the user.

I will re-activate Gutenburg to check out what you say, but I have no memory of seeing “ellipsis/ellipses” in the top right (though there was a recycle trademark icon there).
Nor did any pop-up text appear with similar information to what you provide, when I hovered over anything.

a) But in any case, whether or not the ellipsis is somewhere, the ellipse icon is not an intuitive visual indicator that its use is for fixing a toolbar location.
An icon which visually prompts a users to “fixing an item to a location” is by most convention, as “pin-type” icon.

b) The text “Fix toolbar to top” is short and could have ambiguous meaning to some users, due to “which toolbar?”, and “top of what?” (the editor page, the block editor). Possibly consider using “Fix block editor toolbar to top menu bar of Gutenburg, or use some other way to convey that more accurate information.

I understand that the functionality exists, but the usability could probably be improved.
So I have reset this topic to not yet resolved.

Thanks

I prefer to be active on this WP site, so please feel free to copy and paste across to where ever you think will be to good use.

Thank you

I prefer to be active on this WP site, so please feel free to copy and paste across to where ever you think will be to good use.

Thank you

Hello Marius L.J.

1) Re

“Windows file system” approach

Though Windows Explorer uses this type of layout, this is not the aim to replicate that.
The aim is to use a menu system that is similar to those used by text editors, and graphics design systems, so that users will be able to “discover” functions in locations that they would otherwise “by familiarity – expect” to find them.

2) Re

group things

Yes. That is the fundamental concept. Group tasks/functions of similar use of applicability, so this reduces the expanse of screen space that needs to be looked over to find what the user is looking for.

3) Re

it would also hide them much more than they are today.

Bearing in mind that one of the significant adaptions of the Gutenburg editor is the use of “blocks”, and that all these blocks are selected from a drop down menu (that is quite lengthy).
Taking the same line of thought and applying it to the “block selector menu”, then these are being hidden. Does this mean that the blocks may be better presented across the top bar/side-bar/area of screen so they are readily apparent and not hidden at all?

4) Re

Discoverability is something we are still working on improving and I fear that moving things into menus and sub-menus like this would make them harder, not easier, to find.

Yes – please do some more work on improving “discoverability”.
It is also helpful to avoid causing the user to “feel lost”.
The main thing is, users are used to finding things in certain places. This is only a convention. But it does mean that those places are where they will probably try first. If “those places” are not even present, then that means that the UI is very unfamiliar – and it becomes yet another learning curve (i.e. impediment to walk in and start using straight away).
At present the UI is not very populated, so anything that pertains to functions, is probably going to become evident with only small exploration (and need for “exploration” is another indicator that the UI is neither familiar nor intuitive).
But the future additional functions of this editor are going to increase the complexity of the UI at least threefold (two more main uses), not including any extras (nor third party additions), so it is important to set the framework now, so as to make the incremental improvements to functionality, without needing to do a UI redesign partway(s) along the way.

5) Re

This is a website after all, not a desktop application, so the expected user flows differ a fair bit

Whether the application is based on a website (server based) or on a desktop (local machine), it is still an application that the “user uses functions to complete a workflow”. Notwithstanding limitations of hardware, the User Interface appearance is designed for the user, and good UI design is helpful no matter what the equipment is.
As an example of complex editors, video editing can be done on desktops or servers. But all the other applications that are now becoming available on the cloud, do not radically change the appearance of their user interface, just because they are based on a server. In fact many are designed to be as similar as possible in appearance to their original local machine based version.
To be clear – I am not suggesting “copy”, and there is no desktop version of WordPress (though it can be set up on a local PC server), but the concept of top menu generally following task processes left to right (or RTL in some countries?), should be a concept that is born in mind when placing functions in the UI layout. So “grouping” is part of that – whether grouped in a sub-menu, or placed next to each other in a main menu, or just placed in a similar area of the page, is going to be helpful for the user to quickly become accustomed to the UI.

6) Re

(also, how do you distinguish between File in the editor and File in your browser, that kind of confusion is what we would like to avoid).

You may have noticed that at no point in the suggestion have I mentioned “file” in connection with the website design, but it was used to “draw a similarity”.
The similarity being based on the task flow process.

7) Re

They’re interesting thoughts though, and I’m glad to see that more areas of the editor are being evaluated! If you’ve got some input on my understanding (hey, perhaps i misunderstood you, it happens, please feel free to follow up!

Thank you – I think we can talk, and I hope you look forward to discussion.

8) Here’s an additional thought – side-by-side UI testing.
Similar in concept to the use of “swap in/out” plugin for Gutenburg and Classic editors, which allows users to try something new, compare, and restore to original if needed;
It is good during development of environments that involve UI, that there are facilities for trialing and comparing options (e.g. layout, styling, sub-layering of interface, etc). This can be done in two main ways;
The developers set the UI and maybe have more than one option (e.g. as is the case with Gutenburg or Classic), or the developers allow for an adjustable UI that any user can customize to their liking (possibly gathering data of feedback, so as to be able to have the software suggest suitable default settings for a beginner to start using it with).

It would be handy for users to be able to choose their preferred layout, independently of what the developers anticipate the user may (or may not) want.

“Layouts” are about placement/locations. The functions that get activated by items embedded in the layout, depend pure on the item and not on where it is placed. So given the functions that are available, the layout can be relatively easily altered.
So themes/templates could be possible.
But …
since Gutenburg is aimed at making customizable page layouts, and the Gutenburg editor is actually just a webpage (but its purpose is for editing), then perhaps Gutenburg could be used to design the layout for its editor interface (UI) page.
And that function for designing the editor page layout, could be entirely made available to a user, if a user wanted to.
But this all depends on the developers being willing to have this happen.

Thanks

Hi appleisle,

Yes, I noticed the “+” icon move to the top left at some point.
It seemed to do that after the first block was added.
Not only do the menu systems, and icons, buttons, links vary in appearance,
but also the locations jump around.

However, before starting to venture into this UI behavior, I thought it best to attend to the icon appearance (or disappearance), before attending to where ever else it chooses to make its re-appearance.

Thanks

Hello lizkarkoski,

I prefer to be active on this WP site, so please feel free to copy and paste across to where ever you think will be to good use.

Thank you