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Opened 10 years ago

Last modified 13 months ago

#28321 new enhancement

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

Reported by: davidanderson's profile DavidAnderson Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 3.5
Component: Media Keywords: phase-3-media-triage
Focuses: ui, administration Cc:

Description

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.

Attachments (2)

28321.patch (4.6 KB) - added by LeoPeo 10 years ago.
Example of 28321 patch
28321-2.patch (2.9 KB) - added by LeoPeo 10 years ago.
Correct Patch 28321 (no nav-menu.php changes)

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (17)

#1 follow-up: @ericlewis
10 years ago

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.

#2 @ericlewis
10 years ago

  • Focuses ui docs administration added
  • Keywords needs-patch added
  • Version changed from trunk to 3.5

#3 in reply to: ↑ 1 ; follow-up: @DrewAPicture
10 years ago

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).

http://f.cl.ly/items/2p0p421I0n3a0Z0N0a1r/Screen%20Shot%202014-05-24%20at%2010.49.20%20PM.png

#4 @mordauk
10 years ago

I really like the idea of the inline help.

#5 @wonderboymusic
10 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 4.1

This makes too much sense

@LeoPeo
10 years ago

Example of 28321 patch

#6 in reply to: ↑ 3 @LeoPeo
10 years ago

Example of patch attached, it only affect 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...

Version 2, edited 10 years ago by LeoPeo (previous) (next) (diff)

#7 follow-up: @SergeyBiryukov
10 years ago

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

@LeoPeo
10 years ago

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

#8 in reply to: ↑ 7 @LeoPeo
10 years ago

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.

#9 @helen
10 years ago

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.

#10 follow-up: @DrewAPicture
10 years ago

  • Focuses docs removed
  • Keywords has-patch dev-feedback added; needs-patch removed

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

#11 in reply to: ↑ 10 @LeoPeo
10 years ago

  • Focuses accessibility added

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.

Last edited 10 years ago by LeoPeo (previous) (diff)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #accessibility by ceo. View the logs.


10 years ago

#13 @helen
10 years ago

  • Focuses accessibility removed
  • Keywords has-patch dev-feedback removed
  • Milestone changed from 4.1 to Awaiting Review
  • Type changed from defect (bug) to enhancement

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

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by helen. View the logs.


9 years ago

#15 @joedolson
13 months ago

  • Keywords phase-3-media-triage added
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