Extension:InlineEditor/Prototypes/Prototype 1

This page is about Prototype 1 of the Sentence-level editing prototypes.

View prototype 1

Design considerations
The first prototype is simply a proof of concept. It shows the basic idea of splitting an article into sentences, which can be edited, one at a time. The prototype is not actually for use on a live website, but it does show the basic usability ideas behind it.

First of all, the sentences that are editable are highlighted with a light blue color. This color has primarily been chosen because blue is the main color of the default skin of MediaWiki, which Wikipedia uses. Blue is also the color that is recognized on websites as being clickable.

When a user moves the mouse over a sentence, the sentence is highlighted with a slightly darker color. This reinforces the notion that it is clickable, as most clickable elements on the computer screen use some kind of affirmation when moving the mouse over it. On websites, an underline is added or removed, or the link changes color. On popup menus or even the Windows Start Menu, the elements are highlighted by changing the background color to, again, the color blue.

Note that links in the original article are visually preserved. What used to be a link, is now only a colored piece of text. This is to ensure the page looks similar to the original page, and — more importantly — makes sure the user can figure out how to format links in wikitext. When keeping the cursor on a sentence for a while, the wikitext is displayed in a tooltip. This way, it is easier to understand what happens "under the hood".

When actually clicking a sentence, a basic textbox appears, along with "Save" and "Cancel" buttons. The textbox contains the original wikitext. By restricting the amount of wikitext to one sentence, a user may find some "strange" codes, such as links. But because the textbox is placed near the same spot the original sentence was, it is immediately recognizable and does not require any explanation. The amount of codes in the wikitext a user gets to see when editing a page using this editor, is dramatically less than when the user would use the original editor.

While this prototype clearly shows the basic concept of sentence-level editing, it still lacks basic features that are required, even for novice users. Features such as adding an edit summary, previewing changes, and some kind of copyright notice and instructions, are basic features the site (probably) cannot do without.