Media uploader confuses user with description, caption, alt and title, without explanation

[DavidAnderson]

After a decade using WordPress, I still scratch my head when confronted by the media uploader, with its offer for me to enter for each of my images a "Title", a "Caption", some "Alt Text" and a "Description".

As a developer, I can just about figure that out - title and alt text correspond to the HTML attributes. Playing with caption shows that it adds a visual caption. Description? Not sure what that gets used for.

Admittedly, I don't work a lot on content creation. I work more on internals. On the other hand, someone who does work on content creation might not have the knowledge of HTML attributes, so they might be worse off.

There's no help that appears if you mouse around the labels, that explains what they're for.

In summary: the bug is that there are four separate ways to describe your media upload, and no obvious link to any help to explain how these four are distinguished.

[ericlewis]

Completely agree. Tooltips could work well here with descriptions on hover (click for touch devices). We've never entered the tooltip game in core. ​Pointers could work but I'd rather see a more abbreviated UI here.

[DrewAPicture]

Replying to ericlewis:

Completely agree. Tooltips could work well here with descriptions on hover (click for touch devices). We've never entered the tooltip game in core. ​Pointers could work but I'd rather see a more abbreviated UI here.

I'm personally kind of partial to inline-help solution we currently employ in the image editor. I'd like to see a POC leveraging that in other places in core (like here).

[mordauk]

I really like the idea of the inline help.

[wonderboymusic]

This makes too much sense

[LeoPeo]

Example of 28321 patch

[LeoPeo]

Example of patch attached, it only affects the Attachment Details frame from Media Page

​https://www.dropbox.com/s/b89wk0fvzhk54oe/28321.png?dl=0

Personally, I like DrewAPicture solution, but I believe the inline helps should be more globalized inside the Core.

For example, the title, caption and description are in different pages inside WP, patch all of them will affect several files (php, js and css files).

Also, inline helps are useful also in other situations, Menu, Widgets, Settings...

[SergeyBiryukov]

28321.patch​ has an unrelated change in wp-admin/includes/nav-menu.php.

[LeoPeo]

Correct Patch 28321 (no nav-menu.php changes)

[LeoPeo]

Hi SergeyBiryukov,

28321.patch​ has an unrelated change in wp-admin/includes/nav-menu.php.

you are right, I'm new here and I forgot to revert after working on another ticket.
Thanks for notice it. :)

Here above you find 28321-2.patch​ without any changes in wp-admin/includes/nav-menu.php.

[helen]

As much as I agree about the field confusion, if we have to introduce inline help, then we need to work on the UI expectations, not just help text. Like accessibility, we need to balance aesthetics with functionality, and this is aesthetically not good.

Also, themes and plugins can do different things with the various fields. There is no unified expectation around them beyond that they've been there for a long time and a significant percentage of users squeal when we remove them, and that is precisely what is so difficult.

[DrewAPicture]

Not sure what the status is for this ticket. Looks like there are some non-translatable, non-standard strings in 28321-2.patch​.

[LeoPeo]

Not sure what the status is for this ticket. Looks like there are some non-translatable, non-standard strings in 28321-2.patch​.

Yes, 28321-2.patch is not correct out of the box, it's just an example of patch.

We should discuss if inline helps are the right solution and if we should continue to work in this direction.

I believe iniline helps (or other solutions) shouldn't be related to Media Uploader only: similar situations can be found in other Wordpress back-end pages.

[helen]

I think we're still in discussion-and-approach mode here. My thoughts can still be summarized as this:

themes and plugins can do different things with the various fields. There is no unified expectation around them