The 'Revisions' post meta box should scroll

[johnbillion]

When you have a great big long list of revisions on a post the 'Revisions' meta box gets as long as the list of revisions. It should have a max-height and become scrollable.

[helen]

Are any other meta boxes scrollable? What does the comments meta box do for many comments?

[nacin]

We were really close to removing the Revisions meta box in 3.6. A comment from pmaiorana (24804#comment:32) festered, and eventually markjaquith and I reverted it.

I think the best course of action here would be to remove it after we do some revisions improvements.

I'm not necessarily against having this thing scroll, but I question if there is a huge need when it is both collapsible, and also hidden by default.

[johnbillion]

I'd give a +1 to removing the meta box now that we have a prominent link in the publish box.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #25233

[adamsilverstein]

Although it would be easy to add a scroll bar here the meta box here, I also agree we should just remove the list of revisions on the post page.

A more useful location for the list of revisions would be on the revisions screen itself - perhaps in the form of a sidebar similar to what Google docs does for revisions. This would allow us to leverage the lazy loading of revisions data as well, reducing the initial page memory footprint & load time.

[adamsilverstein]

In 25123.diff​ - remove the revisions meta box.

I created a plugin to recreate the meta box @ ​https://github.com/adamsilverstein/wp-revisions-meta-box

So far, I only removed the actual call adding the meta box; do we want to deprecate the rest of the functionality (and maybe move it to the plugin)? Might wp_list_post_revisions be in use by plugins?

• Note that this call to wp_get_post_revisions still grabs all revisions for the post, just to get their count and the last revision id. That seems pretty inefficient! (especially for a large number of / large revisions).

[johnbillion]

I think this comment by pmaiorana 24804#comment:32 still holds some weight. There's no way to browse a post's revision history at the moment. If we remove the revisions meta box I think we'll need to replace it with something similar on the revisions screen itself (maybe a tab?).

[johnbillion]

Actually a sidebar might work well, as you suggested.

[swissspidy]

A more useful location for the list of revisions would be on the revisions screen itself - perhaps in the form of a sidebar similar to what Google docs does for revisions. This would allow us to leverage the lazy loading of revisions data as well, reducing the initial page memory footprint & load time.

It would be interesting exploring this route.

[karmatosed]

I've done two really rough mockups to try and visualise what is being discussed as to show what potentially the sidebar could look like. I've taken literally the existing UI just as a low-fi visualisation. This absolutely should be refined.

v1 makes more sense for the sidebar I feel, but it points to maybe some clarity needed across the whole page.

v2 feels visually more comfortable but makes potentially less sense when you try and read it from a user perspective.

[melchoyce]

I'd like to do another iteration on this screen in the next couple cycles, but I think for now your second mockup is a good update, @karmatosed. If we brought the revisions metabox onto this screen, we should also highlight in the list whichever revision(s) are being shown.

[adamsilverstein]

Thanks for the mockups @karmatosed!

I really like this idea; I think it was something we considered originally for the revisions screen rewrite, but decided against for some reason I can't recall. It would also be great to see some indication of the change size, something like green/red dots or numbers.

I added such of list of revisions in a plugin: ​https://github.com/adamsilverstein/RevisionsPlus. Happy to work that into a patch if its helpful, I can add the highlighting the selected revision @melchoyce suggested as well.

Would the list get a scrollbar if there are many revisions?

ps. for a trip down memory lane, check out design mockups on #23396

[karmatosed]

Could it paginate rather than scroll?

That's a great trip down memory lane @adamsilverstein. I'd be interested in being involved in iterating on things if we ever get time. I still feel revisions is a really important area and the interface can be improved.

[karmatosed]

I would be interested in seeing if anyone else has any ideas on design here.

[adamsilverstein]

I'd love to keep working on revisions in the context of the block editor, however this ticket no longer seems relevant.

Shall we close it @johnbillion?

[johnbillion]

It's still valid, especially for CPTs, but I doubt anybody is going to put effort into fixing it if it's not considered part of the focuses.