Hidden state for Site Title and Tagline

[karmatosed]

The Site Title and Tagline have a checkbox to show on and off. In #31829 there is a great change to make the naming more descriptive.

That ticket inspired me to work on an exploration as to what we could enhance with the checkbox. My suggestion is based on the following improvements:

• Turn the checkbox to mark if hiding rather than being on all the time
• Add a visual indicator of a hidden state through transparency

[celloexpressions]

I would be concerned with making this change because these two fields are extremely important to the site even if they aren't shown on the frontend. Giving them "disabled" styling could imply that they are unused, but both fields are most likely used in the <title> tag for the front page and the title is used in places in the admin for identity purposes. The hide site title checkbox is actually somewhat out of place here, as it is the only option in this section intended to be theme-related (not that there's a better place to put it).

[karmatosed]

@celloexpressions taking the back end use case out of it just for a little bit, to the front end user though they don't show if you flag them. That's where this UI makes sense more than what we have currently.

I'd be keen for more opinions on this as think some improvement is needed in this area. Absolutely could be an iteration or different approach, but what we have currently doesn't make as much sense as it could.

cc @melchoyce @michaelarestad for some more opinions :)

[celloexpressions]

I'm all for this sort of hiding options when they're not relevant. But one major issue I see with many sites is a lack of understanding that the site title and tagline are always used somewhere very public (title tags), and must therefore be set to appropriate text even if they're hidden on the site itself. I think the bigger issue here is actually the checkbox (which is theme-dependent) - I wonder if we could move it somewhere else to help decouple frontend/theme-specific things from fundamental site options a bit?

[karmatosed]

@celloexpressions perhaps by adding horizontal lines we can make those sections feel more distinct?

I'm not totally sure that moving it wouldn't add more confusion. Perhaps something to test as a theory?

[rianrietveld]

We discussed this in the wpa11y bug scrub.
The focus accessibility is added because of the low contrast in those screenshots; and the whole idea of disabling those fields seems unnecessary. If the intent is to have a visual indication they're disabled, why not just set them to disabled?

[westonruter]

Related: Example code to make the Site Title and Tagline controls contextual based on whether the checkbox is checked: ​https://make.xwp.co/2016/07/24/dependently-contextual-customizer-controls/

[karmatosed]

@rianrietveld I'm open to other visual identifiers for disabled. The point currently is we don't have this. Does the a11y team have a suggestion of what visually the disabled should look like? I'd love to see a mockup.

[anevins]

Does hiding the Tagline and Site Title imply disabling the fields? There might be a scenario where you want to hide these fields, but still edit them ready for when you want them enabled. Or as people have pointed out in a recent discussion, edit them in different contexts.

[karmatosed]

@rianrietveld any a11y suggestions here?

@anevins hmm I'm not sure how many would want to edit ready. That's interesting to maybe find out? What recent discussion are you referring to so we're clear?

[melchoyce]

Chatted with @zoonini. Since your site uses the title/tagline in more than just the front-end display of your site (for example, in your browser bar, or for SEO purposes), we should still allow people to fill in this information, even if they've chosen to hide it from their header.

I think we should close this and focus on the title/tagline improvements in #37516.

[karmatosed]

That makes sense @melchoyce +1