User:Equisetum/scrapbook

A nice idea from the idea lab - contact relevant parties and craft into a proposal

Stronger reminder that you are seeing a preview

Currently, when one previews an edit, one sees the following reminder in bright red text at the top of the preview page:

"Remember that this is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved!"

(Thank you, warning. On several occasions, you have prevented me from failing to save an edit.)

Unfortunately, I am sometimes absent-minded, so that occasionally, during a complex series of edits and previews and checking of links, after I've scrolled far down into a preview, I can forget having seen the warning.

My idea, then, is to strengthen the warning just a bit by making the whole preview page look slightly different from an ordinary encyclopedia page. (This is similar to some reminder techniques I use in database GUI design.) Thinking about the existing red warning message, I am imagining something pink or red that would be visible in any part of the preview page. Here are two possible techniques:

1) Add a thin red vertical line to the left edge of the preview page.

2) Make the entire background of the preview page pale pink.

Other kinds of visible reminders are possible, and might even be more practical to implement -- I don't know. The two key points are that the different appearance of the page should be rather noticeable, and that the difference should be visible from any scroll position.

Thanks for listening, and I'd really welcome any comments on this. Dratman (talk) 05:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I remember the confusion I has as a newbie. Good idea. I l[ke technique #2 because it is more noticeable, but the ultimate decision has to be the programmers. Rebele | Talk ^{The only way to win the game is to not play the game.} 06:38, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add my support for this. It's just good UI design, especially option 2. One caveat is that it would be necessary for the colour to be modifiable using vector.css or similar for accessability reasons (some people need to use particular coloured backgrounds due to visual problems). For the same reasons it would have to play nicely with custom background colours people may have set up in their browsers. Finally just to say that if this doesn't gain support as a default I imagine it should be possible to implement it as a UI gadget in preferences. Equisetum (talk) 12:05, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea, especially a pale color (and as suggested, customizable). I was tripped up by this just yesterday, wondering why I had an error in a page that I was sure I had addressed, then to look at the other screen and realize it was still open, not yet saved.--SPhilbrickT 15:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree it would be good if there was a more in-your-face reminder you're still on a preview - your edits are not saved yet. Incidentally, this is extremely easy to achieve with a snippet of custom CSS. I have made the warning at the top of the page larger, with a thick red border, and the actual page with a pale background colour as suggested. Very clear, no missing that. Superp (talk) 22:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Auto-saving drafts

A more comprehensive solution would be to auto-save article drafts similarly to what Gmail does; this would also protect against loss of unsaved revisions from power failures, computer crashes, and such. Tisane (talk) 23:18, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Me, I don't have a need for that. Superp (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I've separated this idea out into a subsection, because from the implementation perspective it is rather different from the other ideas here, even though it addresses a similar need. Feel free to revert me if you object to this separation. Equisetum (talk | email | contributions) 21:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

There's a Firefox extension called Lazarus that does that. Fences&Windows 01:33, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

That's good for home computers; I'm not so sure about, e.g., university library computers and other locked-down systems that don't allow new software to be installed. Tisane ^talk/_stalk 04:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC)