Editorial Flow office hours, today (Tuesday) at 1800 UTC.
I’ve been working on some mockups over the weekend of possible UI implementations for revising published content. Still very draft and a bunch of unanswered questions, nonetheless here are some pictures:
- The “Save as Draft” and “Publish Changes” flow: http://cl.ly/image/1b401P3B0d3U
- “Update” vs “Save as Draft” with a drop-down button: http://cl.ly/image/2o0C3b3r252d
- “Save Changes for Later” vs “Discard” in a drop-down button: http://cl.ly/image/0y0T0Y0H0M1X
- Everything hidden in a misc-publishing-action: http://cl.ly/image/2J0e0A3N0F2b
- What a contributor would see: http://cl.ly/image/1Q2V1Q3L3L46
So the agenda for today’s office hours is to discuss these, and maybe pick a direction (even if it’s totally different from the list above). Since there’s an overlap with the Revisions team, would appreciate if @westi and/or @ethitter popped in.
John Blackbourn (johnbillion) 1:38 pm on January 29, 2013 Permalink
My vote goes to the first option (http://cl.ly/image/1b401P3B0d3U) which looks like it’ll work well and is surprisingly intuitive.
berkun 5:45 pm on January 29, 2013 Permalink
Two thoughts:
1. Overall the first option seems simplest (assuming these are 4 alternative designs). Only question is why the last screen is needed. It seems each of the options that show under the ‘More’ dropdown is already present. (UI redundancy can be ok, but not sure why it’s needed here)
http://cl.ly/image/0z2w0P2f0O0V
2. In the first design details of the publishing status disappear on the 3rd screen. Saying “This version is unpublished” expresses less information than the previous state, where it says “Published on Jan 1st. 12:54″.
That loss in detail might be fine if we’re certain the user knows they’re working on a revision of something already published and the time it happened is irrelevant. But ideally we’d find an elegant way to tell them both info about when the original was published, *and* info that the current revision is unpublished.
We could say:
This version is unpublished
Last version published at 1/21 12:45
There’s a small can of worms here in how the schedule field behaves. It’s the only place the last published time appears, yet it goes away depending on what options the user has set.
Konstantin Kovshenin 6:07 pm on January 30, 2013 Permalink
Cool, thanks for the feedback Scott! We discussed this briefly in IRC, everybody seemed to like the first version, or at least the direction. We’ll be working on it in #23314 if you’re interested. From the mockup, “view published version” actually links to the same Edit Post screen, only of the published version, so it isn’t really the preview changes button, but yes, all other options are redundant
Justin Sternberg 6:35 pm on January 31, 2013 Permalink
The publish metabox is already a bit unwieldy without these updates for the standard blogger. What do we think about simplifying the metabox (even more than it currently is) but add functionality in the form of a click to expand type of UI?
Justin Sternberg 6:37 pm on January 31, 2013 Permalink
**sorry, bad grammar** “The publish metabox is already a bit unwieldy for the standard blogger without these updates.”
adamsilverstein 6:42 pm on January 31, 2013 Permalink
i was thinking the same thing, as were also talking about trying to cram a ‘revisions’ link in there on the revisions refresh.
i like the idea of hiding with a click to expand functionality, and also the idea of really simplifying the publish box – all most users need is publish or update; move the other functionality to another box called ‘Drafts & Revisions’…
Justin Sternberg 6:49 pm on January 31, 2013 Permalink
I’m not sure this is the proper time/place to discuss this, but I like the idea of a post status bar? Like a bar above title/metaboxes that displays info like published date, publish status, revision status, post-format, etc (think browser status bars). Then that info can be removed from the publish metabox and other metabox displaying post info (or hidden in a click-to-expand section of the metabox) and give the user a high-level overview of the post’s status.
Daniel Bachhuber 6:55 pm on January 31, 2013 Permalink
Could you share a mockup or wireframe? Also, it sounds like this could be built as a plugin first for user testing / viability purposes.
adamsilverstein 6:54 am on February 1, 2013 Permalink
i created a new ticket (#23352) to track proposed changes to the publish box from the revisions team that relate to your workflow mockups. what do you think of simplifying publish and moving functionality to a new publish options box?
adamsilverstein 6:58 am on February 1, 2013 Permalink
-> #23352