[UX] Spoiler vs Preview icons, separation of Text Color

[Kastor Krieg]

This might be only my poor UI/UX with the new Editor, however:
a)  These icons are confusing. The "eye" doesn't do the Preview. The "text holding page" doesn't do the Spoiler block. Intuitively, they should be swapped.
b)   The Text Color function's icon is separated way off to the right from the  

block, for no apparent reason. This results in a very confusing editing experience.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Kastor Krieg

[Brother Tyler]

I halfway agree with the first suggestion - they eye is confusing as an icon for spoiler text and the page icon doesn't intuitively tell me that it's for previews. I'm not sure that the swapping of the two icons is necessarily right, though - the page icon doesn't match with spoilers (in my mind). I can see the eye as a preview icon, but I've used other editors where the preview icon is a page with magnifying glass. I've been trying to think of a better icon for spoilers for months now, but haven't figured any out.

I completely agree with the second suggestion - all text-formatting options should be grouped together.

I'd like to use this discussion as a place to discuss all user interface/user experience (UI/UX) issues that members might have, seeing if we can collectively come up with improvements.

The current range of header icons is just an initial stab. If anyone can come up with better icons, we're game to change them.

If there are any formatting options that you'd like to see added, suggest them here so that we can explore whether or not we can/should add them.

[Brother Tyler]

The font color icon has been moved.

The caption icons have been shifted to the left.

The spoiler/remove format/preview icons were resequenced, but no other changes have been made to those icons yet.

[Cactus]

I assume there's no possibility of replacing the obscure icons with words. I get that that the international nature of software (particularly anything social) means that icons are in vogue but this is an English language forum.

[Brother Tyler]

If you hold the mouse over the icon, text will appear to explain the plain English formatting.

This only works for PC users and not for those on mobile devices.

[MARK0SIAN]

I’m not sure if it counts for the discussion but I find the grey category tags in the N+R section a bit annoying. On mobile they stand out from the normal text so much that your eye is automatically drawn to them rather than the topic title meaning it’s harder to quickly browse/skim the titles to find anything I might want to read.

Obviously this could just be me who has this problem and it’s quite a minor concern but if others think the same it could be a small quality of life improvement to maybe tone them down somehow?

[Brother Tyler]

There are two aspects to this. The first is the color of the label/tag, which you've hit on. The second is the length and standardization of the label/tag, which we've been discussing.

 

Are there any colors that you think would work better than the gray? Or should we just play around until we find something that is most tolerable?

 

As far as length/standardization, we are generally of the opinion that shorter is better; and not every discussion needs a label/tag. We don't quite have a final resolution on that, but we're working on it.