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Opened 9 years ago

Closed 3 months ago

Last modified 4 weeks ago

#34681 closed enhancement (fixed)

Consider removing the "Disable the visual editor when writing" option

Reported by: mark-k's profile mark-k Owned by: joedolson's profile joedolson
Milestone: 6.8 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Editor Keywords: has-patch commit has-dev-note
Focuses: accessibility Cc:

Description

Is anyone even uses it? considering the lack of love the text editor gets I truly hope that the answer is no.

Change History (40)

#1 @SergeyBiryukov
9 years ago

#34682 was marked as a duplicate.

#2 @SergeyBiryukov
9 years ago

  • Component changed from Users to Editor
  • Summary changed from Time for the visual editor option in the user profile to die to Consider removing the "Disable the visual editor when writing" option

#3 follow-up: @joedolson
9 years ago

  • Focuses accessibility added

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

The accessibility team will probably need to discuss this; it may be reasonable to remove, since it's not the only way to deal with that issue, but it'll need discussion and possibly some feedback from users with disabilities.

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


9 years ago

#5 in reply to: ↑ 3 @mark-k
9 years ago

Replying to joedolson:

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

Maybe I miss something. Removing this UI do not change anything in the editor, you are still able yo switch from the visual editor to the text one. The only UX impact is that you will still have the visual tab in the editor, but there is nothing that forces you to use it and the default is always the last one you used.

#6 @joedolson
9 years ago

For clarity, I didn't say that I think this is definitely a problem; I said that I think it needs to be looked at by the accessibility team and raised with users with disabilities. We have to make absolutely certain that the controls to switch between the visual and text editors don't have any accessibility issues.

#7 @mark-k
9 years ago

I realy hope they are no accessibility issues in switching the tabs in general, as in my age my eyesight is not getting better ;)

#8 @pento
9 years ago

  • Keywords needs-patch added
  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to Future Release

Assuming there are no blocking issues with accessibility, I agree that this option can go away. It's probably a bit late for 4.4, though. :-)

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


9 years ago

#10 @iseulde
9 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Future Release to 4.5

@joedolson any updates? Anyone against it?

Last edited 9 years ago by iseulde (previous) (diff)

#11 @iseulde
9 years ago

  • Keywords good-first-bug added

#12 @joedolson
9 years ago

  • Keywords good-first-bug removed

Will follow up with the a11y team in our meeting Monday.

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


9 years ago

#14 @joedolson
9 years ago

The biggest problem right now is that the tab sequence in the post editor is confusing, which makes it harder to switch between the visual and HTML editors. The fact that the options are between the editor and the title field, but are skipped when tabbing from title to post editor makes them difficult for a user to intuitively locate from the keyboard.

In cooperation with some movement on reorganizing the editor and post process per @michaelarestad's post https://make.wordpress.org/design/2016/01/11/improving-post-new/, this would be more desirable.

There's no opposition to removing this from the user settings, other than that it's confusing to find this control in the post editor from a screenreader + keyboard.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by chriscct7. View the logs.


9 years ago

#16 follow-up: @chriscct7
9 years ago

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

#17 in reply to: ↑ 16 @afercia
9 years ago

Replying to chriscct7:

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

Yes. :)

#18 @chriscct7
9 years ago

  • Milestone changed from 4.5 to Future Release

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


8 years ago

#20 @iseulde
6 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Future Release to 5.1

Might be worth removing now with the merge of the block editor?

#21 @afercia
6 years ago

Will propose to discuss this later today during the accessibility team meeting, but I don't think this should be removed.

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


6 years ago

#23 @afercia
6 years ago

Discussed during today's accessibility meeting. Agreed that, before removing this option, the "tabs" in the post edit screen to switch editor's mode should be made easily discoverable. Currently, they're "skipped" when tabbing with the keyboard. There's some JS that moves focus from the post title to the post content. That should be removed first so the tabs are in the natural tab order.

#24 @pento
6 years ago

  • Milestone changed from 5.1 to Future Release

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


5 months ago

#26 @joedolson
5 months ago

  • Milestone changed from Future Release to 6.8
  • Owner set to joedolson
  • Status changed from new to accepted

The blocker to this setting removal was resolved in [59188], so I think we can move this forward again.

Now that the ability to switch between editors is more discoverable and in a natural text order, I think this is an option. Removing the setting has no impact on immediate user experience, it just changes the way the setting is configured.

Last edited 5 months ago by joedolson (previous) (diff)

#27 @prasadkarmalkar
5 months ago

Hello,
I would like to work on this issue. I have a doubt: should we simply remove the input field from user-edit.php, or do we need to remove all dependencies on the rich_editing option as well? There are multiple functions, such as user_can_richedit, that rely on this option, and these functions are used across multiple files.

#28 @joedolson
4 months ago

@prasadkarmalkar No, we shouldn't remove any of the dependencies; this is *only* about removing the explicit option from user settings. Additionally, we should make it conditional: the setting should still display if it is currently checked, to give people the ability to turn it off, and should be omitted if it is already not enabled.

#29 @prasadkarmalkar
4 months ago

Thanks @joedolson ! I will start working on this.

This ticket was mentioned in PR #8005 on WordPress/wordpress-develop by @prasadkarmalkar.


4 months ago
#30

  • Keywords has-patch added; needs-patch removed

In this PR I have added a condition when displaying the option for 'Disable the visual editor when writing' only when the user has already changed it to checked.
Here is the demo of a user already having the option checked.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/64332d1f-00f0-4aac-8543-63d4d979645c

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34681

#31 @prasadkarmalkar
4 months ago

I have raised PR for this issue. I have added a condition when displaying the option for 'Disable the visual editor when writing' only when the user has already changed it to checked.
PR link - https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/8005

#32 @rcreators
4 months ago

@joedolson PR tested. Good to Commit.

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


3 months ago

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


3 months ago

#35 @joedolson
3 months ago

  • Keywords commit added

#36 @joedolson
3 months ago

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from accepted to closed

In 59695:

Editor: Remove option to disable the visual editor.

Remove the option "Disable the visual editor when writing" from the user profile if it is currently false. If enabled, the option will stay available until disabled.

This was blocked due to issues with tab order and focusability in the classic editor environment until [59188].

Props mark-k, SergeyBiryukov, joedolson, pento, iseulde, chriscct7, afercia, prasadkarmalkar, rcreators, jamieblomerus.
Fixes #34681.

#38 @joedolson
3 months ago

  • Keywords needs-dev-note added

#40 @JeffPaul
4 weeks ago

  • Keywords has-dev-note added; needs-dev-note removed

This has now been published as a section in the Miscellaneous developer changes in WordPress 6.8 dev note post.

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