Make better use of screen real estate in editor toolbar

[Sim]

There's a huge amount of wasted space in the editor toolbar that could be used to bring useful icons (bullet lists? unindent?? save draft???) to the forefront so we don't have to go digging through menus to find them.



I would have thought a better model would be to progressively collapse icons into drop down menus as you lose screen real estate rather than hide them for the sake of a "cleaner" UI.

Let the power users on large monitors get the full editor experience by exposing more icons rather than arbitrarily increasing the number of clicks required to get stuff done.

I also think it's confusing to have multiple "other icons" menus, especially when there is no visual indicator about which one houses that missing icon you are searching for - you have to remember which one to click on. One menu for additional icons should be all that's needed - especially on a large screen.

 

[Sunka]

Some people won't care about formatting their content, they just want to type.

I agree.
And without first one who will create rich content, there will no be the other people who won't care about formatting their content, they just want to type.

 

[Sunka]

This is more mobile style/formating to post like you are on Facebook/Twitter.
XenForo is forum platform, it is core for anything else, do not lost that from your sight. And most of quality posts are done from desktop computer

 

[JamesBrown]

Just tried the new editor on iOS and it’s a bit of a mess.

It is. Its fine on the ipad and sits out of the way, but on my iphone 11 plus the '+ popup' sits in the middle of my message.

 

[JamesBrown]

And most of quality posts are done from desktop computer

not on any forum of mine. mobile is king.

 

[RobParker]

Just tried the new editor on iOS and it’s a bit of a mess.

Clicking in the reply box brings up the quick insert + pop up that hides the text you’re trying to type.

There’s a menu expand button on the far left that expands the menu to a second line but with no new buttons (is something broken there?)

Hitting return for a new line brings up the quick insert thing again so you have to hit return multiple times.

A large chunk of the menu bar is empty at this viewport size too.

Not sure if it's Safari being crap or if you did something on your end but the empty dropdown on the far left seems to be gone this morning

The insert pop up could still do with offsetting somehow from the cursor and having it appear when pressing returns means that what's meant to be a quick insert feature now means on average you need to make more key touches than you would have (assuming you write more than 1 paragraph).

 

[RobinHood]

The multiple menus does work quite well on mobile.

It’s nice having only the one line of icons.

 

[RobinHood]

Not sure about the floating insert circle. Seems a bit buggy to test properly at the moment.

 

[Kier]

Not sure if it's Safari being crap or if you did something on your end but the empty dropdown on the far left seems to be gone this morning

It's an intermittent bug that just appears sometimes, but on the plus side, we have now identified its cause (it's taken us two weeks...) and will be rolling out a fix soon.

 

[Mr Lucky]

The three vertical dots is a problem for me. I've only just realised they have a dropdown. I thought they were just dividers, but you need to actually hover over them to see more options.

Not a huge issue again as I presume we can customise this to make it more obvious to people. But it's odd they don't at least have a downward triangle like font size dropdown,

 

[RobParker]

The three vertical dots is a problem for me. I've only just realised they have a dropdown. I thought they were just dividers, but you need to actually hover over them to see more options.

Not a huge issue again as I presume we can customise this to make it more obvious to people. But it's odd they don't at least have a downward triangle like font size dropdown,

Yep, I was going to say the same but thought that was unfair. They're not obvious "hamburgers" and do look more like separators but I imagine people will realise quickly when using the editor.

 

[Sim]

but on the plus side

I see what you did there!

 

[RobinHood]

On the flip side for mobile it would be nice if there was an icon you could tap to hide all the buttons on mobile and remember your preference.

I made a separate suggestion here

Lack of interest - Add icon/ability to hide all editor buttons on mobile.

The new more compact editor on mobile is great, but it would be even better if there was a way to toggle them off completely and save that preference as a per user basis. 90% of the time I'd probably keep all the icons hidden on mobile.

xenforo.com

 

[Wildcat Media]

In the forums I manage, some members can barely make complete sentences that make any sense, some not even able to use an uppercase letter or punctuation. I think a toolbar is probably the least of our worries. In one forum, several years after having attachments in XF, they still can't figure out how to use it properly!

That would be an interesting database query, to find out how many posts actually contain more than the very basic BBCodes.

To be honest, I never use the toolbar--I use the keyboard shortcuts. (And I try never to post from a mobile device if I can help it--I'm old enough that the only way I can communicate is by a real, physical keyboard...)

 

[Mr Lucky]

And I try never to post from a mobile device if I can help it--I'm old enough that the only way I can communicate is by a real, physical keyboard...)

Me too but I’m using dictation more and more on mobile. Bold that backspace delete

But as you can see I haven’t got formatting to work with dictation I Tallac that

 

[Wildcat Media]

I Tallac that

 

[briansol]

95% of posts contain only:
- link
-insert/attach
- smiles

That should be the menu for mobile.
progressively enhance for larger sizes

 

[Wildcat Media]

That should be the menu for mobile.

With mobile, so many users are now accustomed to using the native emoji support in their device's keyboard that they use those instead. In fact, that has been a feature request on our forums that still run on XF 1.5. (We're finishing up customization to get those to 2.1 shortly. It's just a monumental task and I'm only one person doing it.)

 

[briansol]

certainly! can we 'install fonts' like font awesome to support animoji, and all the standard keyboard icons, etc?

 

[RobinHood]

I really like the changes made so far to the editor. But looking at it again, I does seem kind of silly to hide this lot on desktop



There's plenty of space to show these icons in the same row at this width, so why hide them away behind a click? You could completely eliminate a menu at desktop width if you bring them to the top level.

I'd move inline code and inline spoiler to top level and all the insertion icons to top level if there is room.

The more you expose the capabilities of the software to users by default, the more likely to use them. Hide them away straight away you're gimping the chance the feature will be utilised because a user won't bother to look deeper into in a menu. And the more you frustrate the users that use those features regularly and make them jump through more hoops to find the content block they're after.

I'm all for clean interfaces. But if you go full Jonny Ive you just start making the interface harder to use at the expense of usability for the sake of nice screenshots. Never go full Jonny Ive.

XF has a super capable and beautiful editor, give us all the options to enhance our content on the platforms with screen real estate. We don't want a crap featureless editor no buttons like the other social media sites (At least on desktop)

 

[Paul B]

You can adjust that for your own site by increasing the number of visible buttons.