Implement a toggle for display of contextual links [#648370]

We now have a cleaner, and getting prettier, implementation of contextual links as per #601150: Improved UI for contextual links. The patch in #99 was committed and the outcome is that the contextual links for a region are now hidden until a user places their cursor over an editable region at which point a small/clickable cog icon appears in the upper right corner and the editable region is outlined with a dashed border. Discussion continues in that issue about styling the menu that appears when clicking the cog icon.

There was some discussion about the borders being overly intrusive since they appear no matter where you place your mouse which I agree can be a bit annoying.

This issue #602408: Adjust height of shortcut bar has some discussion about implementing an editing mode toggle, though is mostly about design of the toolbar/shortcut bar. Discussion summary:

1. What should the toggle be named? Possible suggestions include "Edit content", "Edit mode" and "Edit page". "Edit content" is thought to be to general.

2. Do we really need an editing mode toggle or should contextual links behave like they do in views (HEAD currently)?

If I understand correctly the intent of the edit mode toggle in that issue is that contextual links/borders do not appear on the page until a user has toggled editing mode for that page. Once editing mode has been toggled and a user places their mouse over an editable region the region is outlined and the contextual links menu appears. (This is what HEAD does currently without any sort of on/off toggle.)

Am I on track here?

If so, couple of questions. 1.) Does the editing mode toggle do anything else? 2.) Once toggled should it persist from page to page? If so, what is the best way to store that semaphore? Should it be on until toggled off? Should it persist across sessions? 3.) If a user is manually toggling edit mode is there a reason that we're hiding the contextual links until the mouse over a specific region? Would it be more intuitive if once editing mode was toggled the cog icon for each region just appeared on the page?

Comments

Comment #1

eojthebrave

he/him

English

Minneapolis, MN

CreditAttribution: eojthebrave commented 2 December 2009 at 00:35

http://drupal.org/node/601150#comment-2326428, and the few comments after it contain relevant thoughts. Mostly concern that the borders appearing around everything all the time is a bit overwhelming.

Comment #2

sun

German

Karlsruhe

CreditAttribution: sun commented 2 December 2009 at 00:55

A global editing mode toggle would have a (positive) performance impact when not browsing pages in edit mode.

But, how often would I need to reload a page to toggle the edit mode then? Like, daily? Like, hourly?

True, I can both comment on issues on d.o, but also be node/comment administrator.

But do I want to have to click on a link (somewhere, somewhere where my user role doesn't even have access to?) to enable the edit mode? To be able to do what I wanted to do afterwards?

Comment #3

yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commented 2 December 2009 at 08:00

Status:

Active

» Closed (duplicate)

Marking this a duplicate of #616618: Allow contextual links to be disabled

Comment #4

David_Rothstein CreditAttribution: David_Rothstein commented 3 December 2009 at 02:35

Status:

Closed (duplicate)

» Active

#616618: Allow contextual links to be disabled is a meta-issue touching on too many things at once. This one is nice and focused, so let's use it instead.

Note that there are dozens of comments, screenshots, discussion and some code for this already at #473268: D7UX: Put edit links on everything. It's a tough problem. And if it goes in the toolbar at all, #585776: Make 'edit mode' toggle available even when toolbar module is disabled certainly becomes relevant again.

I think it's clear that there are use cases for both types of behavior ("always on" as is currently in core, and "toggle-able" as proposed here). The question is whether both really need to be in core. We don't totally need to answer that question here though - if this doesn't go in core, a toggle for contextual links would still be great as a contrib module. So any work done won't be totally lost or anything.