[issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

jtlapp · 2006-03-21 18:32:25

This is a 4.0.3 bug only in the sense that it is confusing for the user (being me):

(1) Initially the comment form has an unchecked Forget.
(2) I check the Forget.
(3) I hit Preview.
(4) The preview form shows an unchecked Forget.
(5) I submit the preview.
(6) On the next visit I get an unchecked Remember (with my information properly forgotten).

If you swap ‘Forget’ with ‘Remember’ everywhere above, the same thing happens.

The problem is that the user’s change to the checkbox pre-preview appears to have been forgotten on the preview. Had Forget changed to Remember (or vice versa) in the Preview, this would have been fine. My suspicion is that this label swapping was intended but did not happen.

Okay, now for a non-error gripe: When I first saw the word “Forget” I spent a few seconds trying to figure out what the checkbox did. I’m an experienced web developer and had quite a clue. I wonder how many users would also spend some time wondering and then perhaps get it wrong.

My preference is to have a “Remember this information” checkbox whose label never changes. The box is either checked or not, as appropriate.

Mind you, I’m in love with Textpattern. It either does what I need or it seems that a simple tweak to the source gets it to do what I need.

~joe

jtlapp · 2006-03-21 18:53:29

I guess my other issue with Remember vs. Forget is this:

(1) ‘Forget’ is an action that we do once. Once we forget something, it’s forgotten. I’d expect ‘Forget’ to label a button rather than a toggle.

(2) ‘Remember’ can be an action, but it can also be an ongoing state. I continue to remember. It could label either a button or a toggle.

It’s all semantic, I know. But I’m putting up a bit of a poetry site, where every bit of semantics matters.

~joe

Logoleptic · 2006-03-22 00:39:21

@jtlapp: The use of a checkbox for remember/forget is a bit of a usability headache. Rather than a regular form button (i.e. submit button), however, I’d recommend using a pair of radio buttons.

W3C guidelines, not to mention virtually every set of UI guidelines for various operating systems and desktop environments (Mac OS, Windows, GNOME) agree (to quote Jakob Nielsen):

Radio buttons are used when there is a list of two or more options that are mutually exclusive and the user must select exactly one choice. In other words, clicking a non-selected radio button will deselect whatever other button was previously selected in the list.
Checkboxes are used when there are lists of options and the user may select any number of choices, including zero, one, or several. In other words, each checkbox is independent of all other checkboxes in the list, so checking one box doesn’t uncheck the others.
A stand-alone checkbox is used for a single option that the user can turn on or off.

While I understand that the choice of a single remember/forget checkbox is probably intended to follow #3, I agree with you that most people think of remembering and forgetting as distinct and mutually-exclusive actions. As such, they should be presented together using two radio buttons with clear descriptions such as “Remember my information” and “Forget my information.”

The single-checkbox thing has been a minor pet peeve of mine with Txp. There is a way to customize the display of the comment form, but you can’t customize the remember/forget checkbox or its label. Hopefully this can be addressed in a future release.

jtlapp · 2006-03-22 03:29:41

I’ve found another bug and a few more features that I’m not fond of:

(1) BUG: If in Preview you change your name/email/url and you’re remembering, the new name/email/url gets correctly posted, but it isn’t remembered.

(2) If in Preview you change the remember/forget checkbox, you get the preview form again without any error indication. I didn’t explore this thoroughly, but at first I thought I forgot to hit the submit button.

(3) TXP can’t distinguish between someone who has never before been to the site and someone who has been to the site but has elected to forget the user information. In both cases, the user’s next visit to the site is greated with a checked Remember box (TXP can’t remember to keep forgetting).

(4) If the newly entered name/email/web (at least one) differs from what’s already found in cookies, TXP checks the Remembered box, regardless of whether the user did so. It seems to me that if multiple people are using the same browser, the default ought to be not to remember user information.

(5) (From above:) If you check Forget and then Preview, the Preview’s Forget box is still unchecked.

————

I have fixed all of these problems in my source, plus forced the checkbox to always read ‘Remember’.

I did this by adding a new ‘forget’ attribute to txp:comment_form. If forget=1, you get the current behavior and all of its quirks. If forget=0, you get the following new behavior:

(1) The checkbox always says ‘Remember’ — it’s merely an issue of whether it’s checked.
(2) The checkboxes on the pre-preview and preview pages now always agree.
(3) If in Preview you change the ‘Remember’ box or change any of the data, that data is appropriately remembered or not and the page advances.
(4) A cookie ‘txp_remember’ now tracks the remember state, so TXP can correctly distinguish between new-to-site and remember-off users.
(5) TXP respects the Remember box even if the name/email/url changes.

I didn’t want to change existing behavior (hence forget=1) out of respect to those for whom the disagreeable features are hallow.

So what should I do with this code? All mods where in publish/comment.php. I had to modify about a dozen existing lines and add about a dozen more. (I’ve been using Textpattern for a total of 4 days and don’t know the ropes.)

~joe

P.S. Where’s Textile’s horizontal rule?

Logoleptic · 2006-03-22 04:07:15

jtlapp wrote:

P.S. Where’s Textile’s horizontal rule?

You can’t do a horizontal rule in Textile. I’m not sure why you’d want to put one in the middle of an article, actually. If you want a horizontal line, you can always use the border property of CSS to achieve the same effect. Set it on any block or inline element, and you’re good to go. It’s much more flexible than <hr /> as well.

Some examples of border being used to show divisions between content areas:

My photoblog
On this site I did for a friend, the home page calendar uses a bottom and left border. In the archived guestbook entries from the site’s olden days on Yahoo, a dotted bottom border separates the individual entries.
On this site I just finished, a footnote is given a faint top border to help distinguish it from the main content of the page.

Hope that helps solve your problem. :)

Last edited by Logoleptic (2006-04-09 05:44:11)

jtlapp · 2006-03-22 05:04:12

Wow, Adam, very nice sites! Right, I didn’t think to use a CSS class. But I wasn’t sure which one to use in the above post. I was trying to visually separate two distinct portions of the post. Maybe I should have done two posts. Not knowing what CSS classes are available on the forum, I opted for a line of dashes. Thanks!

jtlapp · 2006-03-22 05:47:28

I guess I’m proposing that this fix go into a subsequent TXP rev.

What’s the procedure for making that happen? Approval process?

Do you let random Joes (har har!) ci via SVN? Thanks!

~joe

jtlapp · 2006-03-22 06:09:06

BTW, I can also offer fixes to the above-mentioned bugs in the current code path, but the problem code is tied in with the strange ‘features’ I also described, and it’s not clear to me which of those features I can change without upsetting people. I’d likely decline to offer a fix if I had to preserve all these features — the effort would be too roundabout. Hence my separate forget=0 code path. ~joe

Mary · 2006-03-22 08:03:03

You’ll want to join the dev mailing list, where you can send in patches.

txp-dev mailing list
http://lists.textpattern.com/mailman/listinfo/txp-dev

FAQ: How do I fetch the current development version? (the source you should be patching against)
http://textpattern.com/faq/103/how-do-i-fetch-the-current-development-version

Subversion FAQ (How to make a patch)
http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=6648

Sencer · 2006-03-22 08:51:21

Hi jtlapp,

thanks for the bug report. I haven’t had the time to check and understand all the details, but I can confirm that there are definitely oddities going on. I’ll try to fix this before the next minor release. I might get back to you on some details, once I have the time to dedicate to it.

Sencer

jtlapp · 2006-03-22 18:02:14

Thank you Mary and Sencer.

Just to clarify, my mods accomplish two things:

(1) Checkbox always says ‘Remember’, never ‘Forget’.
(2) Eliminates all the current oddities.

Regardless of whether we address (2) in the current code path, I (and apparently others) would like a code path for (1). My proposal was to add a forget=0 or forget=1 attribute to txp:comment_form.

Today is a very busy day for me, but I’ll share my mods via the dev list when I get a chance. If we can decide that it’s okay to eliminate some oddities from the current code path, I’ll likely offer fixes for that too.

~joe

Logoleptic · 2006-03-22 18:25:34

jtlapp wrote:

Wow, Adam, very nice sites!

Thanks! :)

Right, I didn’t think to use a CSS class. But I wasn’t sure which one to use in the above post. I was trying to visually separate two distinct portions of the post.

Ah, I thought you were talking about horizontal rules within Txp articles. My bad.

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#1 2006-03-21 18:32:25

[issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#2 2006-03-21 18:53:29

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#3 2006-03-22 00:39:21

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#4 2006-03-22 03:29:41

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#5 2006-03-22 04:07:15

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#6 2006-03-22 05:04:12

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#7 2006-03-22 05:47:28

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#8 2006-03-22 06:09:06

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#9 2006-03-22 08:03:03

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#10 2006-03-22 08:51:21

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#11 2006-03-22 18:02:14

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

#12 2006-03-22 18:25:34

Re: [issue] Remember/forget forgets but remembers

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