Goals
We have been ramping up with small prep changes such as moving the preview toggle, integrating AI suggestions, adding GIFs int he toolbar, and are now ready to try the bigger change which is available to try as an experimental upcoming change.
Our main goals are:
-
Update the composer in line with our general changes to modernise our look and feel
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Improve the mobile composing experience
We’d love your help testing it before it moves further along.
How to try it
- Go to your Admin→ Upcoming Changes at
/admin/config/upcoming-changes - Find Composer redesign and enable it
- Open the composer (reply, new topic, or a new message) and take it for a spin on both desktop and mobile
You can turn it off again at any time from the same place. Here on Meta you can join the new test group composer-testers.
We especially need feedback from anyone running theme components or plugins that customize the composer — this redesign changes the composer’s structure slightly, not just its styling. More on that below.
What’s changed
Layout & structure
General
- The title has been incorporated into the content, making it appear more like a document title (Notion users should find this familiar)
- Toolbar has been moved to the footer. This will take a little muscle-memory adjustment (it annoyed me too for the first few days
) - Reworked category and tag inputs (including a tag icon and minimal selection display)
- Less borders, more spacious feel
Markdown
- The title, category, and tags now sit in a full-width metadata area above the editor + preview pane, rather than restricted to the left column.
Mobile
A really big driving factor of this project is trying to improve the mobile experience. There have been an abundance of justified complaints regarding this on Meta over the years [1] [2] [3].
To increase the available space while composing, we’re experimenting with an expanding editor, which slides up on focus, covering the composer fields, and stays expanded while the editor is focused. This is applicable when making a new topic or new PM, not when replying.
This more than doubles the available writing space, going from 103px to 212px (when testing on my device – actual results may vary).
Other
- The toolbar toggle is removed in the new layout
- Swipe down to dismiss the keyboard and collapse the editor back to normal
- Chosen tags are only visible when the menu is opened. The icon is coloured to indicate a selection has been made.
Feedback
This is still highly experimental and I’m mainly interested in finding out how it works on regular screen sizes (desktop & mobile) on Foundation. Tablets, folding phones, other themes, and so on have not been optimised yet.
Calling theme & plugin authors 
If you connect to composer plugin outlets or style the composer, please test with the redesign enabled. The DOM has moved, and some customizations may need adjusting:
- The composer fields block now renders as a full-width child of the editor container, no longer inside the editor’s text column
- Content injected into the
composer-fieldsoutlet now appears above the title (between the category/tags group and the title), full-width - The title field is rendered as its own row, separate from the category/tags cluster and below them instead of above
No outlets have been renamed or removed (although they may be later to semantically adjust to the changes) — your connectors will still attach. What’s changed is where and how wide your content renders.
If you spot something broken in your theme or plugin, please reply here with the component/plugin and a screenshot. That feedback is exactly what this testing phase is for.
Design 
Here are some specific trade-offs or design decisions I’m on the fence about myself that could use some input. Everything else is welcome too of course.
A) Why is the title input so damn big?
So the idea is that it’s bumped up to a bigger size than a manually added H1 is, to ensure it’s always visually the title in the document. Sometimes I look at it and think “gross”, other times I’m like “yeah, this works”.
Another idea is to scale down the existing titles slightly, to achieve the same effect.
B) Are the hidden tags an issue…
…big enough to not be worth the trade-off on mobile (more space for the category).
If so, why?
C) How does the animation for the expanding editor work on your device?
Is it jank-town? Good enough? An improvement? Alternative ideas or tweaks to make it better?
D) What about the AI suggest-title-button?
I’m not overly fond myself of how it’s floating all by its lonesome there. How does it feel for others (that use it)? Very open to hear design ideas.
Thanks for helping us get this right before it ships more widely. 
It feels like a much more modern and elegant way to compose. I also tried moving the toolbar to the bottom in the past, and I think it’s much more comfortable this way.
