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Opened 9 years ago

Closed 9 years ago

Last modified 8 years ago

#31344 closed enhancement (fixed)

Inconsistent terminology on menus panel

Reported by: frankieandshadow's profile frankieandshadow Owned by: helen's profile helen
Milestone: 4.2 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 3.6
Component: Menus Keywords: has-patch commit
Focuses: ui Cc:

Description

If you add a link to a menu using the "Links" box, it shows up in the menu contents alongside as "Custom". So when I said to my client "just add a new Custom menu entry" they didn't know what I was talking about. Please can you change "Custom" to "Link", or something which uses the same word(s) in both places. Didn't this used to say "Custom Links"?

Attachments (2)

wpscreenshot.jpg (100.4 KB) - added by frankieandshadow 9 years ago.
screenshot
31344.patch (2.9 KB) - added by tyxla 9 years ago.
Changing Links and Custom to Custom Link(s) in administration nav menu interface.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (12)

@frankieandshadow
9 years ago

screenshot

#1 follow-up: @DrewAPicture
9 years ago

  • Keywords needs-patch added
  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 4.2
  • Version changed from 4.1 to 3.6

Good catch. Yes, I believe it was previously called "Custom Links" prior to 3.6. I was never really a fan of just boiling it down to "Links", I much prefer what it was before.

#2 @tyxla
9 years ago

I totally agree with you guys. IMHO, Custom Link (singular) and Custom Links (plural) makes most sense to me. Neither Custom nor Link(s) seem clear enough for users that don't have much WordPress experience.

Attaching a patch for that.

@tyxla
9 years ago

Changing Links and Custom to Custom Link(s) in administration nav menu interface.

#3 @tyxla
9 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch added; needs-patch removed

#4 in reply to: ↑ 1 @SergeyBiryukov
9 years ago

Replying to DrewAPicture:

Good catch. Yes, I believe it was previously called "Custom Links" prior to 3.6.

Right, see comment:217:ticket:23119. The argument was that "Custom Links" doesn't convey any action, so it was changed to "Add Links", but the "Add" prefix was removed later for consistency with other accordion boxes.

(Other boxes initially got the prefix as well during the work on #23119, but it was removed later for i18n reasons.)

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


9 years ago

#6 @ocean90
9 years ago

  • Keywords commit added

#7 @helen
9 years ago

  • Owner set to helen
  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

In 31748:

Nav menus: Return to calling links "Custom Links".

It was like this before 3.6 and got a bit lost during that development cycle. Also uses the terminology more consistently in the nav menu UI.

props tyxla.
fixes #31344.

#8 @designsimply
8 years ago

Neither Custom nor Link(s) seem clear enough for users that don't have much WordPress experience.

Based on testing I've done so far, the longer label "Custom Links" is still a little confusing. Maybe it's just links in general that are confusing to people who are not experienced with editing content for the web and that will always be the case for some regardless of the shorter "Links" label versus the longer "Custom Links" one. In the tests, users seem to find their way quickly enough but surprisingly sometimes open "Custom Links" and then just skip right over it.

Here is a short highlight reel of clips so far: 5m39s
(Note: there are clearly visible bugs in the first few clips which have been fixed now, some of these tests are from earlier feature development)

From the original description of the problem:

So when I said to my client "just add a new Custom menu entry" they didn't know what I was talking about.

This makes total sense if the label was actually "Links" and you told them to add a "Custom" entry. :) What you described sounds like a problem with the instruction, not with the UI. Had you instructed someone to add a link, I don't think they would have had any trouble.

Anyway, I don't think keeping something the same label as it was in the past is necessarily a good argument for forgoing change. I like the idea of continuously working to find the clearest, simplest solution, and sometimes that turns out to be different from the status quo. I don't feel strongly enough about this particular label to ask to change it back (yet), so that's why I'm just adding some thoughts here. What I can say is that so far in testing, I never saw the "Links" label come up as a blocker for anyone. If this comes up again in the future or if it persists as a point of confusion in user testing, I will open a separate ticket.

Cheers, and thanks frankieandshadow and tyxla for adding feedback/patches and for being a part of WordPress. :)

#9 @frankieandshadow
8 years ago

It wasn't what was called that was the problem, but that it was called two different things in different places.

#10 @designsimply
8 years ago

I see. I don't know the history of why links are named "Custom" in the menus admin page. My guess is that people have trouble with links in general (regardless of the "Custom" label), which is what is starting to show up in tests.

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