Problem/Motivation

If an entity field appears in a block, and it is in-place editable right in the block, then confusion can arise. E.g. imagine that it is an entity's "Title" field. Then the user might think that he's editing the title of the block, not of the entity.

See #1824500-59: In-place editing for Fields point 2, #1824500-61: In-place editing for Fields point 2, #1824500-64: In-place editing for Fields's part that responds to #59, #1824500-73: In-place editing for Fields and #1824500-87: In-place editing for Fields point 2.

Proposed resolution

Increase the length of the label, to include the name of the entity type and/or the entity bundle. However, this in itself may also cause confusion and increase the mental (and visual) complexity.

We need to investigate this more, conduct usability testing. While working on this, we must take into account that we may want to add in-place editing to more than just fields; this may impact the labeling design

Remaining tasks

Do it.

User interface changes

TBD.

API changes

None.

Comments

Bojhan’s picture

Also possibly view mode? This definitely needs testing, but we can probably explore some solutions first.

webkenny’s picture

Is there a way to indicate visually, perhaps with an icon of sorts, that you are editing deeper than the level you see? I don't even know how one would visually represent such a thing but in my mind I wonder if it's a warning icon that pops up. (Think a "caution sign") - This causes a person, typically, to roll over it. Then, when rolled over some kind of flag could appear saying: "You are editing {FIELD] of [ENTITY]" - Wording could use improvement but I think you see where I'm headed.

Wim Leers’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed
Issue tags: +Spark

I believe this was mostly — if not completely — addressed implicitly at #1874664: Introduce toolbar level "Edit" mode that shows all contextual links:

  1. there is no more "global" (i.e. page-level) "edit mode" in the toolbar; in-place editing is now toggled via contextual links
  2. consequently there are only per-entity "edit modes", in the sense that all editable fields for that entity show up as editable
  3. as such, very little potential for confusion remains, because only the fields for *one* entity at a time can be edited in-place

This animated screencast gif shows how it works (not the current state, but the concept remains the same): http://drupal.org/files/pencils-1874664-64.gif

Tentatively marking fixed.

Bojhan’s picture

Sounds fine, lets keep this fixed.

David_Rothstein’s picture

Component: other » edit.module
Status: Fixed » Active

I don't see how it's fixed?

The problem in the issue summary is this:

If an entity field appears in a block, and it is in-place editable right in the block, then confusion can arise. E.g. imagine that it is an entity's "Title" field. Then the user might think that he's editing the title of the block, not of the entity.

That doesn't have anything to do with the number of entities that can be edited-in-place at the same time.

The fundamental issue is that people are editing content in-place on a single page, but their edits affect more than just that page.

Bojhan’s picture

@David_Rothstein You are right, but isn't that just Drupal? We solved it partly by only allowing to inplace edit one entity, instead of everything all at once - which is what WimLeers tried to explain. The fact that this one entity, might be used across the site and/or the block title instead of the content title and therefor misleading - is sad, but I am not sure how much of that is just Drupal.

Wim Leers’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

#1678002: Edit should provide a usable entity-level toolbar for saving fields definitely fixed this. The entity toolbar always shows the title of the entity, as well as the label of the field:

It won't get better than this. (Though the styling will! :))

David_Rothstein’s picture

Yup, that works for me.

There was some concern in the issue summary (and I think earlier than that?) that adding the title here would "increase the mental (and visual) complexity", so not sure what others think about that. (As an alternative, I could imagine an information bar at the bottom of the page or something like that, which tells you information about the entity you're editing - rather than having it be right there next to the field name.)

But it definitely looks acceptable to me as is.

@David_Rothstein You are right, but isn't that just Drupal? ... The fact that this one entity, might be used across the site and/or the block title instead of the content title and therefor misleading - is sad, but I am not sure how much of that is just Drupal.

Sort of, but if you're editing something in a regular form, all the visual cues you see help inform you that you're editing the "thing" itself. Whereas the visual cues of inline editing suggest you are editing the particular page (that the thing happens to be placed on), and that's why there's lots of extra room for confusion over the fact that you're actually editing the thing itself in that case too.

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.