[pmwiki-users] Repost: Could Edit always include Preview?

[Neil Herber]

At 2006-04-28  10:10 AM -0500, Tegan Dowling is rumored to have said:
>Is there something I could change, so that whenever a page is 
>displayed in edit mode (whenever ?action=edit), then the preview is 
>also provided ("e_preview" is also activated)?  I don't think any 
>controls would have to change - maybe just the EditForm, somehow? Or 
>maybe there could be code I could plug in somewhere, e.g. into config.php?
>
>This would make editing a little easier and training *much* easier.

Tegan

This is an interesting idea (worthy of a PITS entry, for sure), but I 
would be inclined not to refer to the displayed text as a preview, 
but as the "current page view" (or something less verbose).

For example, you might display:
* edit buttons
* edit window
* current page view

This would allow newbies to see what the page looks like *now* and 
they could also see the markup that gives the current result.

However, this does become more complicated once they start editing, 
because they will probably want to preview their changes before 
committing to them. I suppose you could do a Gemini-skin-style 
preview popup, but that gives you 3 views of the page on the screen 
(current, edit, preview of edit). And if they do a save and edit, 
then you need to refresh the "current page view". My users seem to 
have enough trouble with 2 views.

Just some rambling thoughts on the idea .... ;-)


Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/