Improve Post Previews

[cfinke]

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.

[cfinke]

A plugin that implements the proposed enhancement.

[toscho]

​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.

[chriscct7]

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.

[pento]

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