841044 - Zen writing mode

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Pablo Cúbico]

What problems would this solve?
===============================
The viewport is quite short when editing content. Specially when translating, where becomes short and narrow. 
The fixed controls at top get too much space.


Who would use this?
===================
Any writer, localizers.

What would users see?
=====================
Less chrome, more content. With some trivial changes to styles and markup, the editable content should take advantage of the whole viewport size.
As for toolbars and "what goes away and what doesn't", it's open for discussion.

In Github, for instance, Zen Writing Mode is absolutely minimal:
https://github.com/blog/1379-zen-writing-mode



What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
Write more comfortably, with less clutter and being able to focus on the content itself with more ease.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================
There's already a "Maximize" button, it's quite buggy when localizing, and I think is just not enough when editing.

Checkout Github's Zen Writing Mode and Sublime Text's distraction free mode.

Comment 1

[Pablo Cúbico]

Sorry, one last thing: I guess we could just improve the way the "Maximize" button works.

Comment 2

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Attachment: Google Docs

Great points, Pablo.

We have talked about making the editor more like the Google Docs editor. Do you think that would help? It sounds almost like your Zen writing mode would be more minimal than that.

Comment 3

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

And by "like Google Docs", I mean making the entire page the edit area, rather than just one relatively small box.

Comment 4

[Pablo Cúbico]

Yes, it would help, remember that when localizing you have a split screen which should also get the entire screen.

As for how "minimal" it should be, I have some ideas, specially when localizing, that I could put them together on a mid-fi sketch (rearranging actual elements on Photoshop/Gimp or something) sometime tonight (it's 3PM here).

I will also capture the screen when using the Maximize button on a translation page, it looks really buggy, we should file a separate bug for that.

As a UX guy, I'm very fond of *metrics*, and of using metrics instead of our own subjective opinions. I was thinking about a poll (Google Forms maybe?) to ask about the editing tools, I can create one and send it to the Mozilla Hispano list, which holds all the spanish translators.

We could make that in english so anyone who is an editor can join, suggested points are:

1. When do you format content?
- On editing time, at the same time, etc.
- First I write a chunk, then I apply formats.

2. How important is to you to have the formatting tools visible all the time?
- Very important
- Important
- Not important at all

3. It would be helpful to be able to hide the toolbars for editing?
- Yes
- No

4. On a scale of 1 to 5, how often do you use these tools?
- H1 [__]
- H2 [__]
- H3 [__]
...etc

5. Place any other suggestion about the formating toolbars:
[__________]


And it's cheap! UX for 5 cents!

Comment 5

[Pablo Cúbico]

6. How often do you edit the HTML source directly?
- Very often
- Quite often
- Often
- Not so often
- Almost never

Comment 6

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

A poll sounds great. And I like the idea. Will be sure to keep it in mind, balanced with our other priorities of course.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.