Hello,

I’m 21, and I have a bit of experience and interest in web ergonomics. I’ve contributed to the design of a few websites (notably [[http://www.france-ioi.org/|this one]], which was really worse before). I’d like to share my opinion on this task as a Wikimedia contributor. I hope I’m not too late.

I’m not sure all my ideas are appropriate here but let’s spread. I’ve realized screenshots on a random article with the DOM manually modified.

For the preview, I’m dreaming about something like this:
{F8094031}

I.e. two (possibly resizable) frames, one containing the code and the other one for preview or reviewing changes.
On my desktop computer, I have two monitors with a resolution of 1920×1080. With this configuration, I could extend my browser window on the two monitors, and have the code on the first one, the preview on the second one.

The initial setup would be:
{F8094055}

Then you would click on ‘Preview’ in the dropdown:
{F8094059}

It would make the preview appear on the right, half width, just like in the first screenshot but a bit larger, till the bottom:
{F8094074}

You could have full preview by sliding:
{F8094102}

You could reload the preview by clicking on the button ‘Preview’. To get the dropdown, you should click on the arrow. If you select ‘Review changes’, then the button’s label would change to ‘Review changes’.

Then for writing the summary, the popup annoys me because it takes more than 1 second to appear. I contribute mainly for minor edits (orthotypo, article structure, etc.) and I sometimes do a bunch of them so I’d like efficient tools.
I would imagine something similar to the Find & Replace panel when you click on ‘Done’:
{F8094203}
(I would also prefer it for template editing because the current dialog lags…)

Other ideas:

- Two different scrollbars: {F8094424}
- With these separate scrollbars, a button to show the section containing the cursor in the preview, and another for the opposite (would be very useful when I’m reviewing long articles). This button could be on the vertical splitting bar.
- For monitors having different sizes: vertically resizable frames (or two different windows?): {F8094520}
- In the ‘Preview’/‘Review changes’ dropdown, a second subsection with 3 choices: Hidden/Splitted/Full to set the frames’ width automatically (or another button which would toggle between these 3 choices when clicked): {F8094595} I’m also suggesting new labels there. ‘Reviewing the changes’ is actually like viewing a preview of the changes.
- Maybe having separate toolbars/dialogs in the two frames (e.g. Find & Replace with the wikitext, Publish with the preview)…

Note that, currently, I’m often using two different windows for editing: the first with the wikitext editor and the second with the published article (to explore it and make the fixes at the same time; but it is quite a pity not to view the changes I’m realizing).

I’m not sure I’m the ‘common’ editor but to me it would really be simpler to improve the quality of articles with such an interface, and newbies might appreciate it too.

What do you think about all this? I can give more details if you feel there’s a gap somewhere.