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Opened 10 years ago

Closed 5 years ago

#25546 closed feature request (wontfix)

Improve Post Previews

Reported by: cfinke's profile cfinke Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 3.8
Component: Editor Keywords:
Focuses: Cc:

Description

There are several pain points around previewing posts:

  • Tab switching. If you have more than a few tabs open, it can quickly become a game of "Which tab was my preview in?"
  • Keeping your place. If I'm editing the end of a long post, every preview requires me to scroll down to the place where I made my edits.
  • No instant feedback. Previewing is a manual process, requiring the user to click the "Preview" button each time they want to check out how the latest version looks.

I propose a return to the in-page preview from days of WordPress yore, but updated and improved:

  • Side-by-side editor and preview. No scrolling down to the bottom of the page required.
  • "Instant" updating of the preview as you type. No need to click "Preview" more than once.
  • The preview maintains its scroll position, showing you the changes to your post in the part of the post you want to see.
  • Backwards-compatible. Right-clicking "Preview" and choosing "Open Link in New Tab" still works like it used to.
  • Responsive. The preview pane can be resized to immediately view the post in widths from "smartphone" to "fullscreen."

In the spirit of "new features as plugins", I've attached a plugin that does what I've described above. It's also available at http://wordpress.org/plugins/inline-preview/

Some likely candidates for improvements to the existing plugin:

  • Detect when the screen/window size is already too small to comfortably fit an in-page preview and fall back to the old behavior.
  • Better UI for the preview's "X" close button.

Attachments (1)

inline-preview.4.zip (4.4 KB) - added by cfinke 10 years ago.
A plugin that implements the proposed enhancement.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (7)

@cfinke
10 years ago

A plugin that implements the proposed enhancement.

#1 @nacin
10 years ago

  • Type changed from enhancement to feature request

#2 @toscho
10 years ago

  • Cc info@… added

https://gist.github.com/toscho/6899684 is my plugin for this. I use it on many sites. It uses a metabox. Doesn’t do everything from your list, but my users like it.

#3 @ethitter
10 years ago

  • Cc erick@… added

#4 @kovshenin
10 years ago

  • Cc kovshenin added

#5 @chriscct7
8 years ago

  • Keywords needs-patch added

This plugin is still being semi-actively maintained. It'd make for an interesting feature-as-a-plugin as a less drastic alternative to the earlier Frontend Editor idea.

#6 @pento
5 years ago

  • Resolution set to wontfix
  • Status changed from new to closed

Closing this issue, as inline post previews will ultimately be replaced by inline editing with the block editor.

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