Still display the Reply / Create Topic button when using full screen composition

When using the full screen post composition, I think the Reply / Create Topic and cancel buttons should still be visible. I don’t think it would result in any less composition space since the check box (after auto-save) and the hide preview button are both already visible.

Right now when I’m done writing and proofing my post, I have to close full screen mode to hit the Reply button. The extra step seems unnecessary to me, so being able to reply directly from full screen mode would be a welcome addition.

8 Likes

Yeah I agree this seems odd, why do we hide the submit buttons in full screen @Johani?

Oh wait, I remember. Because we feel if you are ninja enough to do full screen, you know that esc cancels and ctrl+enter submits the post.

Just tested and, it works. Hover your mouse over the submit button if you’re going to say “but I didn’t know about the keyboard shortcut” :wink:

4 Likes

I never thought to try Ctrl+Enter in full screen mode. I guess since the buttons aren’t visible I inferred that you couldn’t submit the post in that view at all.

Is the fact that you can use Ctrl+Enter a reason not to include the buttons though?

2 Likes

See above sentence as previously stated.

1 Like
  1. Why does using full screen make you a “ninja”? I wouldn’t assume that only power users are using full screen mode. Some people might just want more real estate to see what they are typing.
  2. Is there any harm in adding this button? I only see it as a benefit to make full screen mode more user friendly and allow non-“ninjas” to enjoy this functionality more.
2 Likes

The reason why the submit button is removed has very little to do with how much space it takes. The actual reason is that you can’t submit a topic with an invalid title or without tags (if they are required).

In the default composer view, you’ll get a very clear error letting you know what’s wrong:

When the composer is in full-screen mode, we hide all the fields except for the body of the post.

This is very intentional as one of the goals of the full-screen composer mode (all the way back to when it was a theme component) was to create a distraction-free minimal interface.

Adding the submit button to the full screen composer like so

is possible, but it can lead to confusion in case the user hasn’t filled in the required fields like the title (and tags in some cases).

Even if the button is visible and you click it, the post won’t be submitted. So you end up with what looks like a broken button, until you exist the full-screen mode. You will then see the error on the title / tags fields (see the first image above).

So, if we add the button, we would then also need to add all of those fields in the full-screen mode as well. This ends up looking a lot less minimal and more cluttered than what we want it to be.

Besides, using the full screen composer implies that you’re probably writing a lengthy post, so it’s a good idea to check if anything has changed in the discussion (if it’s a reply) rather than directly submitting the post.

I’m not saying that there won’t be improvements in future iterations of the feature, but for now, the keyboard shortcut is your best bet.

13 Likes

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I wonder if it might make sense in the future to show the buttons if it’s a reply (so it doesn’t have the issues you described with new topics), though it being inconsistent also might not be the best for the user experience.

All the points you made definitely make a lot of sense. I’ll try to get used to the keyboard shortcut for now.

2 Likes

Is is possible to hide access to full screen composer until a title/tags are set, so the Save Edit button can be shown within full screen composer at all times?

2 Likes

@johani note how f11 shows a bit of transparent overlay UI at the top then scrolls off to let you know how to “exit” fullscreen mode… something like this could be done here as well perhaps?

It’s an overlay that briefly appears then fades away gracefully. That might be nice!

1 Like

It’s indeed nice looking, but to tell what, here? Exiting the full screen composer is easy: The same icon you clicked to enter the mode is still there to click again to exit.

The discussion in this topic and in the other one ( There is no reply/save edit/save wiki button on the full screen composer - #5 by Mevo ) was about the lack of the repy/validation button in the full screen composer. Tell people they can use ESC + ENTER? Is this what you would want to show? (btw, this way of validating has all the exact same potential problems as the lacking button)

This has come up quite a bit. So I guess we can do both.

  1. a quick prompt that tells you how to leave the full-screen mode “Press esc to exit.”
  2. add the + create topic / reply buttons to the full screen mode. If title/category/tags are missing, we force the composer to go out of the full-screen mode. You’ll then see the errors.
10 Likes
  1. Currently “ESC” doesn’t seem to be an “exit from full screen” but something a little different: It totally quits the composer if there is no text in it (nothing was entered or everything has been deleted), or it iconifies it if there is some text.

  2. GREAT! I’m happy about this. I feel this was indeed something lacking.

About a message for “how to quit fullscreen”, I’m not sure anything is really necessary, as the icon is still there (this isn’t the case with fullscreen browsers: After a “F11”, you can’t quit with your mouse anymore, which let some users kind of “stuck”. Now, they also added a “x” button which appears when you hover your pointer in both upper corners)

1 Like

Yeah the UI model to follow is the one where you press f11 in the browser, e.g.

1 Like

Yes please! Our non-ninja users would benefit significantly.

3 Likes

This was on the back-burner for a while, but we now added these two features:

Here’s what this one

a quick prompt that tells you how to leave the full-screen mode “Press esc to exit.”

looks like

And here’s what this one

add the + create topic / reply buttons to the full screen mode. If title/category/tags are missing, we force the composer to go out of the full-screen mode. You’ll then see the errors.

looks like

If the user creates a topic/reply that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for a given site setting (title too short - body too short - required categories/tags), then the composer will go back to the default view, and they’ll see the errors they need to fix.

If the composer doesn’t have any errors, they will be able to post from the full-screen mode as expected.

8 Likes