Topic on VisualEditor/Feedback

Movable table rows/columns

4
Wittylama (talkcontribs)

I've been playing with the table editor in VE - seeing what it can do. It's a GREAT improvement and has enabled me to do things I wouldn't have done before! It still has bugs (like how to activate a cell, keyboard shortcuts [e.g. tab, or arrows] don't work to navigate around, and double-clicking on links in cells cause the screen to jump around), but I'm very happy with how it's working so far.

For what it's worth: if I was able to vote on the next feature that would be super-useful to add, is to make it possible to "move" (drag) a column or row to a different place in the table. I consistently find this to be the thing that I keep expecting to be possible (even though it was not possible in the traditional editor) and frustrated when it's not possible.

Also, one tiny thing about merged cells:

  • When I have a merged cell, and I go to "de-merge" it, the button still says "merge". When the highlighted cell is already merged, the text on the button should instead say "un-merge" or "de-merge" to indicate to the user what will happen.
Jdforrester (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hey Liam,

Dragging columns and rows is definitely the thing we're looking to implement next with regards to tables; it's a particularly challenging thing to re-order a column in wikitext, so making it much easier would be a real value for users. However, we've decided that it's not as urgent as performance work, so it will have to take a back seat for a while, sorry.

On the labelling of controls, this is the standard that we use in VisualEditor to mirror other editors – when you select some text which is bold, the bold button is depressed to indicate it's "on" and clicking it will remove it; it isn't labelled "De-Bold".

Wittylama (talkcontribs)

You are quite correct about the "de-bold" example... Now that you explain it that way, I can indeed see that when my cursor is on a merged cell, the "merge" button is in a darker shaded background - in the same way that the "bold" button has a darker background when my cursor is on bold text. I suppose then, that my feedback is that this visual feedback was not sufficient to subconsciously indicate to me that there was a state change active. In short, the colouring change was too subtle for me to "get" it. Perhaps that's just me being dimwitted, but there you go... Is something more prounouced possible (for all the things - not just 'merge'), or would that go against some styleguide?

I understand that "dragging columns/rows" is but one feature request among many. It just surfaced very quickly in my editing Tables with the VisualEditor as the KEY missing thing that I kept trying to do and forgetting wasn't possible. I realise that it wasn't possible before (in the code editor), but that just goes to show how clearly it stood out as the obvious next big thing that the table editor needed. I'll try to come to the Wednesday IRC meeting where you're soliciting for "community priorities" and see if I can't get it prioritised there :-)

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Update: Dragging table columns to rearrange, although widely agreed to be an awesome feature, is likely to be "not soon". The best guess is sometime later this year, but not the next couple of months. (Any dev reading this is welcome to pleasantly surprise me by deploying much sooner than expected.  :-)

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