Topic on Talk:Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review

Condensed / Compact version?

14
Summary by Trizek (WMF)
Nihonjoe (talkcontribs)

Could a condensed, more compact version be implemented of the edit filter section at the top of the watchlist? The "new, improved" version takes up about five times the space the previous one did (the one with the small radio buttons). Thanks, 日本穣 Nihonjoe (talk) 22:07, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

ElKevbo (talkcontribs)

I second this request. This is a legitimate usability issue.

Nihonjoe (talkcontribs)

I'm just not a fan of the current trend to make everything huge. I can understand having it as an option (for those who need larger fonts and such, for example), but making it so everyone has to use up so much screen real estate for six/seven huge buttons? That's just a little ridiculous. Maybe I'm just old school in that respect.

Tenbergen (talkcontribs)

I third it. Let's keep this compact.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

It may surprise you, but, based on the team observations, the overall new interface is as high as the old one on most wikis; it is even sometimes a bit more compact that the previous one.

View of the compact mode link ("hide") for recent changes and watchlists.

Have you seen the "hide" link on the top-right of watchlist and recent changes pages, below the "saved filters" option? It displays an interface more compact than ever.

Tenbergen (talkcontribs)

I use MW1.31 and I don't get the hide button. I guess that must be a more recent addition. I still run MW1.30 on another wiki, and the new version's filter GUI really is only a little big taller, maybe 1 line, but it is taller. The "hide" could make things better, especially if it can hide by default. However, even when "hidden" the top area still has those big buttons and a lot of whitespace. I just took a screen shot of it, and at my resolution the font in the buttons is 11 pixels high, where the font on the page (eg the change links) is 9 px high. Maybe it would look less bloated if the font were the same size?

ElKevbo (talkcontribs)

Trizek, for me (Chrome on Windows 10) that button collapses one menu to the left and moves everything else up a little bit but it mostly creates a bunch of new whitespace.

Here is a screenshot of my Chrome window with the new watchlist: https://imgur.com/a/Ve4C0yc. That's a maximized window at 1080p resolution. Between the normal Wikimedia UI and the watchlist UI the substantive content - the actual watchlist - doesn't begun until about 2/3 down the screen. That's a legitimate usability issue. It's not the end of the world and it doesn't mean that the tool is broken but it does mean that it needs to be polished.

I readily concede that the new watchlist doesn't take up any more screen real estate than the old one; I think the whitespace just makes it really obvious how much space the UI of this tool takes up.

Nihonjoe (talkcontribs)

EkKevbo's screenshot is how it appears for me in Firefox 61.0.1 (64-bit) in Windows 7. And it is quite a bit higher than the previous appearance. There is no way to hide all of the tools, but if they could be made more compact, perhaps on a single toolbar (similar to the edit toolbar when editing an article), that would be awesome. Even if it was just an option to display it that way, so everyone else who likes the humongous new version can keep using it.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@Tenbergen, the hide button is a recent addition (end of June).

@ElKevbo, the screenshot is the normal display.

You all suggest to have a more compact toolbar. What would you like to have remaining visible on that compact toolbar?

Nihonjoe (talkcontribs)

You can have all of them remain visible. I'll try to mockup something later to show you.

ElKevbo (talkcontribs)

I haven't conducted any usability testing (I hope that you and your colleagues have!) but I can't imagine that most users routinely make changes to these settings so I would only retain a "Show settings" or similar option to view all of the settings.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Apparently, you both have a different opinion about what's should (or shouldn't) be displayed. :)

We haven't performed tests per-se on that very specific point but we have created that collapsing feature based on user feedback we've received.

Sorrel (talkcontribs)

I'm a little late to the discussion, but have you considered that maybe the problem is that the large amount of visual noise makes the controls look bigger than they are? The previous watchlist controls meshed fairly nicely with the rest of the Vector skin, whereas the new filters have dark borders and bold icons everywhere.

I made a change using custom CSS to change the border colour of all elements from #a2a9b1 to #c8ccd1 (in Vector, this is the colour of the legend's border, also used for e.g. the ToC in articles) – and suddenly it looks much less busy.

I do think that there's a large amount of wasted space between the buttons above and below the controls, however (between "mark all as read" and "saved filters", and between "live updates" and the length-of-time dropdown). There's space to put all four buttons in a single row with room to spare, even on my not-so-large screen, so it looks a bit silly to have one button at each side with a huge gap between them, especially when the toolbar is collapsed as ElKevbo pointed out.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Controls are using the standard palette named OOUI. That standard has been defined to be accessible and unify the experience across all services and all wikis. That includes more margins and paddings than on the old interface. Colors are standard as well.

Concerning the toolbar, I'll wait for more inputs while, as already said, everyone is not asking for the same thing. :)

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