Articles panel, ID# column, "Copy" link

Destry · 2018-05-02 10:23:47

What is that supposed to do? I pose the question as example of the problem it has UX-wise, because I honestly don’t know for certain by looking at it.

My guess is it’s supposed to be an easy way to ‘duplicate’ the article, as the Duplicate link in a given article functions to do. If that’s the case, then a much better word is ‘Duplicate’, and it provides more consistency in the UI text strings.

But it’s rather unsightly too see all those repeated ‘Copy’ links like that, and if they read ‘Duplicate’ it would be the same. I see ‘Duplicate’ is already in the ‘With selected…’ menu, which seems more than sufficient.

If they are indeed supposed to be the same thing, I would vote to remove that link from the column. It’s appearance does not make using Txp particularly easier, and is even a little confusing as is.

Bloke · 2018-05-02 10:37:50

I agree it’s not pretty. But it does serve a different function to Duplicate, as follows:

On the Write panel, Duplicate will copy and save the article, giving it a new title that contains the ID of the just-created article and will force it to Draft. Makes sense. But you have to edit the title before publication to remove the ID.
On the Articles panel, the multi-edit Duplicate feature does the same as above, for all the checked articles.
The Copy button, however, just takes the content of the copied article and puts it all in a fresh Write panel, sets the status to Draft but does not save it. Thus no enforced ID is added to the Title field, meaning less work for you and also doesn’t automatically increment the internal ID until you save. The article is thus only written to the database when you hit Save.

Improvement suggestions to the workflow / naming or anything are of course welcome.

Last edited by Bloke (2018-05-02 10:41:18)

etc · 2018-05-02 10:42:46

Duplicate saves the copy, while Copy only takes you to the Write tab with new (yet unsaved) article fields copied from the “original”. That can be handy if you want to apply some modifications before actually saving the copy. But not ideal UX-wise, I agree. Should we remove the link? It still remains possible to access a copy via some specially crafted URL.

Destry · 2018-05-02 10:46:50

Hmm… I see. That’s a pretty fine-grained distinction, with, if I dare say, dubious need, at least compared to the UI result.

Just a thought, but why not make the ‘Duplicate’ feature function as the ‘Copy’ feature now does (without the save action too), and remove the ‘Copy’ feature as is. That would make the situation I described initially.

So a person has to make an extra click to Save. No big deal. And that’s how I thought the ‘Duplicate’ function worked anyway. ;)

I’d rather have it that way, personally, as a means to not accidentally generate a needless article ID if I decided at the last minute I didn’t want it. Sure, I can reuse the article by manually overwriting content, etc, but then it’s already more work than just creating a new article from scratch.

etc · 2018-05-02 10:53:04

Destry wrote #311566:

Just a thought, but why not make the ‘Duplicate’ feature function as the ‘Copy’ feature now does (without the save action too), and remove the ‘Copy’ feature as is.

Because you can not copy multiple articles this way, I suppose. The copy feature was introduced to give a possibility to have “template” articles, prefilled with some data.

Destry · 2018-05-02 10:58:23

Ah, I see.

Hmm… I can only think of ever needing/using to copy one template article at a time. A kind of pre-fill markup situation for endnotes, or whatever. But multiple? That seems like a rare use case, for the muddle it causes.

But that’s just my limited scope. I might not have the situation that appreciates it.

Destry · 2018-05-02 11:02:36

Maybe you just need to add a title/hover attribute on the ‘Copy’ links, something like…

“Will duplicate article in Write panel but not save it.”

Likewise on the ‘Duplicate’ link in the Write panel…

“Will duplicate and save article as draft.”

etc · 2018-05-02 11:06:17

Hypothetically, you might want to duplicate all articles matching some criteria. So you would do a search plus mass-duplicate on Articles tab.

Bloke · 2018-05-02 11:11:42

Destry wrote #311568:

I can only think of ever needing/using to copy one template article at a time.

Yes. That’s why Copy is not a multi-edit feature, but per article.

The thing with Duplicate is that it takes whatever you have in the Write panel now – even Title – and makes a new article out of it. It acts like “Save As”. The only thing it enforces is:

Adding the ID after the article title
Setting status to Draft, regardless of your default publication status.

Copy, however, takes content (such as a template) and puts it in the fields of the Write panel so you can edit it before saving. If that feature was put on the Write panel, what would it do? It’d potentially overwrite anything you’d already written and refresh it from whatever was stored in the database. Not desirable.

etc · 2018-05-02 11:18:21

People are already used to Duplicate, so it should stay, I think. But the Copy link is new and a bit confusing. I have not found a better place for it, please suggest.

Destry · 2018-05-02 11:27:00

If nothing will change, then I suggest at least some hover tips on the respective links, like I suggested above, so that people like me at least get schooled (on the spot) on the difference and avoid these kinds of threads. ;)

Bloke · 2018-05-02 11:28:40

I’ve been mulling over the idea of an ‘actions’ column on the Articles panel with icons on each row. Edit, Copy, Duplicate, Delete, … but it does add quite a bit of visual weight to the page. People can always hide the column though, which is a bonus.

Another thing we might consider (probably for the next version) is a dropdown arrow of actions, perhaps alongside the ID. That has accessibility implications for keyboard nav, but I think we’ve solved quite a few of those in 4.7. so might not be that tricky. And it would disappear if you hid the ID column.

When we improve the JS library, we could also start to allow selective Ajax alteration of stuff like Category, Section, Status, etc on a per article basis in the Articles panel. Like we do with the Yes/No things on the Sections panel. So you can click to change the thing you want directly on the Articles panel, which fetches the options and displays them as a select list. Quickly toggle an article’s status to Hidden or muck about with the categories (tags, possibly in future) without having to do it from the Write panel or the many clicks of the multi-edit.

Edge case stuff, perhaps. And we’d have to be careful to do it sensitively to not make the tables too cluttered or remove existing functionality like the ability to click the status and view the article immediately (though that could be a ‘View’ icon in the Actions column).

A few avenues to explore, methinx.

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#1 2018-05-02 10:23:47