The discussion revolves around improving the Topic History Modal. RobMeade proposes a tweak to the modal, making the footer (containing buttons) separate from the scroll bar, allowing for quick actions without scrolling. jomaxro suggests making the header (containing previous and next buttons) sticky as well, but codinghorror disagrees, citing display room limitations.
jomaxro proposes an alternative solution, collapsing the controls into the already sticky header when scrolled down. RobMeade provides feedback, suggesting the revision number indication could be lost and proposes a hover-over solution. jomaxro addresses the concerns, ensuring the full controls area is visible when scrolled to the top.
The enhancement is deemed feasible by awesomerobot, who implements the change and commits it to GitHub (commit).
Sometimes I need to Hide Revision on lengthy topics, as such, I have to scroll to the bottom of the post within the History modal in order to click the button, if a slight tweak was made to this modal, I wouldn’t need to.
You’ll note that the footer of the modal which contains the buttons is separate from the scroll bar, as per the header of the modal which contains the Close button and the heading;
This would still allow for reviewing of the entire topic where necessary but also provide the ability for quick action by having the buttons visible without scrolling.
I swear I requested this before (can’t find it right now…), but while we’re making the footer sticky, it’d be nice to also make the header sticky - particularly the previous/next buttons. For the same reasons @RobMeade brings up, it’d be nice to be able to change revisions without needing to scroll up all the way. Very useful when comparing multiple long edits. Bonus points if the history modal remembered where it was scrolled to when changing revisions .
The “controls” area takes up over 100px for the previous and next buttons as well as the user who edited it. The footer takes up ~60px.
Instead of making both the header and the footer sticky, perhaps we can collapse the controls into the already sticky header (that currently says “History”) like so:
When scrolled all the way to the top the modal should look as it currently does, but with the sticky footer. When scrolled down we should collapse the previous, next, user, and view type buttons into the header.
I like the idea, my initial criticism (sorry), is that you lose the revision # / ## indication. Possibly not the be all and end all, perhaps if there isn’t room for it, could it appear when you hover over the controls?
I rarely use the history functionality on my mobile, but would this be a consideration also, e.g making sure someone like myself with large, ape-like, thumbs doesn’t hit the wrong buttons?
So nothing is being lost - when scrolled to the top you should see the full “controls” area like you do now. (I see that my mockup is confusing because it’s scrolled to the top…I’ll fix that fixed). Only when scrolled down would the controls collapse. I’m not against adding more info to the collapsed header, we’d just have to ensure that it all fits.
Mobile is a whole different issue. We show a desktop-sized modal that requires scrolling sideways to see everything. I’m all for improving it but that may need a topic of its own - it’s not pretty right now.
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