[Pmwiki-users] Demo: Autosave on Preview

chr@home.se chr
Wed Jul 14 04:10:14 CDT 2004


Hi John

This mail got kind of long, so just read it in pieces...


Comments from reading/testing you demo:

First a bit of "proofreading" of the instructions, hoping it'll make them 
clearer (or demonstrate that I didn't understand them):

>From http://intranet.affinity.co.nz/wiki/DraftWP/Purpose
|	The page draft plug-in lets authors save a draft of a page without
|	affecting the original

	The plugin called ''page draft'' lets authors work on a draft
	of a page without affecting the original page.

|	When editing a page, pressing Preview & Make Draft shows a preview
|	of the page and saves a draft of the edits

	When editing a wiki page, the button @@Save as draft and preview@@
	will save the edited page as a draft and preview it.

|	Leaving the edit page without pressing Save leaves the original
|	page unaltered, but keeps the draft version

	Leaving the edit page without pressing Save leaves the original
	page unaltered, but keeps the draft version assuming you have
	pressed @@Save draft and preview@@ at least once.

|	Pressing Save commits the changes to the original page and deletes
|	the draft version

	Pressing @@Save@@ commits the changes to the wiki page and deletes 
	the draft page if it exists.

Maybe we need a better term than "original"  page. Some alternatives:
	* official page
	* published page
	* public page
	* wiki page

I'm not sure any of these are much better, but I think it'd be good to
find names and terminology that'll make it easy for everyone to
understand. We shouldn't even have to invent terminology for this... I'm
sure this concept of 'draft version' and "published version" is used in
the publishing business or something... but I'm just an engineer.

[Added later on]:  Checked the word 'draft' using 'WordNet', and it seems
the long form is usually 'draft copy', so I guess "original" makes sense.



Experience from playing with the draft demo:

* I never felt I really got to see what the draft looked like...
  Maybe that's simply because the edit form is at the top of the page
  rather than at the bottom? (I usually use Emacs, so I'm used to 
  "previewing" only the page without any source).

** I'd like some way to get to the 'view draft page' from the page where 
   I'm editing the draft page. (There's no obvious way to leave the edit 
   page otherwise, since there's no button that only does "Save as draft")

** [Added a while later] Hmm... hang on, I think I found how to do this:
	1. Click 'edit' on some wiki page
	2. Click 'Save as draft & preview'
	3. Make some changes to the page source
	4. Click 'Save as draft & preview'
	5. Click 'Save as draft & preview'.
	   Now there should be a '*' after the title at the top
	6. Click '*' to view the page draft.

   There's probably a bug here which prevent's the '*' from appearing
   at once.


* The title of the previewed page was:
	Preview DraftWP.WikiSandbox
  Maybe that should be:
	Draft preview of DraftWP.WikiSandbox
  or
	DraftWP.WikiSandbox Draft
  i.e. add something that makes it more evident that you're watching
  a preview of the draft, rather than just a preview of .. something ;-)


* Using the '--' in "Wiki Sandbox Draft --" to delete the draft didn't
  feel so good. Not very obvious or intuitive IMHO.

* I really like having the title attributes for the various links, those
  are great!

* I like the superscript and red color of both '?' and '*', that makes it 
  much easier to distinguish them from normal text.

* Using a different symbol ('*') rather than a '?' when a draft exists is 
  really neat. I'm not sure '*' is very intuitive, but what alternative is 
  there... would '!' be better?  Or an upside down '?' ('?') as they use 
  in Spanish.

* Going from the "official" page to the draft page is easy (I click on
  the '*' after the title -- btw, the title attributes are great:).

* How can I go from the draft page to the public page?
  Is there a method? (I couldn't find it).

As for changing between different branches of a page, it'd be really cool 
if we had a dropdown box that could be used to select the branch. For a 
page that doesn't have a draft, this box would only contain 'public', but 
when the page has a draft, the box would contain 'public' and 'draft'.


Other than that it all seems to work just like it should from what I can 
see. Great work!


Now I'll reply to your replies to my replies to your replies to...

> >> >> Group                           Recent Changes
> >> >> Page Name*                                 ...
> >> >>                                     *Edit Page
> >
> >Just to verify: Clicking '*Edit page' edits the draft?

Um, would it be to obvious to simply make it:
	Group                           Recent Changes
	Page Name*                                 ...
	                               Edit Draft Page

> >> and clicking the * brings you to:
> >> 
> >> >> Group                           Recent Changes
> >> >> Page Name Draft                            ...
> >> >>                                     *Edit Page
> >
> >I might perfer "Page Name (draft)", or "Draft of Page Name", but now I'm
> >into really minor things. Should we have a link to get back to regular 
> >version somewhere here?
> 
> - draft is black; the page name is blue; the delete draft character
>   (-) is red -- have a look at the demo and see what you think

Hmm.. I think I'd still prefer the text to be "(draft)" or "[draft]".
Btw, I just realized that this text is kind of long the way it's place 
right now... see this page for what I mean:
 http://intranet.affinity.co.nz/wiki/DraftWP/PageWithLongTitle?action=draft

> - but perhaps clicking 'draft' should return to the regular page

Hmm... it would be nice with a way to get to the normal page, but it's 
really counter-intuitive to click 'draft' to do this...

> - when editing a page, roll your mouse over the page name that follows
>   'Editing ...' and see the tool tip

Ah.. that works, but my text says: "Edit DraftWP.WikiSandbox", so it's 
counter-intutive to click there in order to go to the wiki page...

I'm not sure changing "Edit" to "Editing" is enough, but we could try.

> There has to be an easy way to get rid of an unwanted draft.
> When viewing the demo, when you are on a draft page, roll your
> mouse over the red minus sign and see the tool tip.

I agree, although I didn't really like using the '--'. A different symbol 
might be better. Maybe there's some unusual symbol, like an 'X' in a box 
or something that would be better. Or putting the delete action on the 
edit page -- that's where I think it belongs to be honest.


> >Um.. not that I argue with you about user confusion, but why does the 
> >draft have to be discarded just because you edit the original
> >page?
> 
> Exactly. Because this initial version only supports one draft,
> consider the following scenario:
> 
> - a page has a draft and an original
> 
> - an author edits the original and presses Preview & Make Draft
> 
> - we just over-write the earlier draft
> 
> So an author could easily over-write the draft without realising.
> I think it's safer always to edit the draft.

I see... ok, I agree -- always editing the draft makes sense now.

> If an author wants to revert to the original, she deletes the draft as a
> conscious action.

What about changing the meaning of the button 'Reset' so that it is used
to revert the draft to the original page. The button could be named:
	"Revert to original"

> >> I'll see what I can come up with.

I really like what you've done :-)

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr




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