Topic on Talk:Page Previews/Flow

cards are too large/tall

8
Quisqualis (talkcontribs)

Hovercards pose a distraction due to their size. I do not need the pictures. Have a small link for an article image. There needs to be a scroll bar for additional text.

CKoerner (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Bush6984 (talkcontribs)

Agreed. (even though I'm 21 days late to this). I'd chalk it up to the images being too predominant and not being tiny thumbnails next to the text that's typically far more important.

Edwardj 123 (talkcontribs)

Although I don't mind its current size much, it is important that users can customise the box size by changing a setting stored with their account/browser session. I think three sizes called default, medium and small would be the best idea - with the image being the main thing resized:

  • "default" as the current size and layout (summary image top or right, summary text with ellipsis dots at end, half font size toolbar with last edit date and Page Previews settings opener button)
  • "medium" the same as default but with the summary image resized smaller and a bit less blank space padding in the whole Page Previews hover box
  • "small" the same as medium but with the summary image resized slightly smaller.

I disagree with the use of scroll bars to show more of the article text unless the standard summary length can't fit into the box size. It is only a summary so should have ellipsis dots such as "..." at the end to show there's more (currently a missing feature) and no scroll bar because showing more is the whole point of the article page itself.

Bush6984 (talkcontribs)

As to the scroll bars, I would agree with User:Edwardj 123 that scroll bars, while a neat extra feature, are kind of going beyond the scope of the purpose of the Preview, such that they don't necessarily need to be added to the Preview; that if a user wants to know that badly about the subject matter, they can just do what we've all been doing all along until this Preview feature came into Beta, which is just normally clicking the link.

Bush6984 (talkcontribs)

I didn't realize this was an option, to change box size, but that definitely seems like a worthwhile/beneficial option to have, for each user to be able to say "I just want a little bit" versus "I want quite a decent amount" of information from the Previewed page.

Would/should there be a more user-friendly way to inform users that they have the ability to customize size? For instance, assuming this makes its way out of Beta and doesn't have to be explicitly signed up for, in each user's Preferences tab (or the Settings gear within each hover, if that bit remains) to inform the common non-Wikipedian person who's just consulting the encyclopedia for information, for them to be able to see an informational "setting" of "If you would like to customize the size of your Preview box, here are your three options" (or "here is how to edit/modify that in your browser").

Edwardj 123 (talkcontribs)
@Bush6984 I think the existing settings icon in the hover box is a simple easy to find way to access the settings and users should expect the customisation options to change the size of the Page Previews box to be in this settings page (like most other applications).
Edwardj 123 (talkcontribs)

Aside from the main Page Previews box/card being too tall issue, the summary image inside it is also too tall when displayed horizontally (it overflows slightly). For example, a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube demonstrates this issue.

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