As we talked about during today's meeting, we are seeking more information about what use cases would benefit from the "simultaneous approach." [1]

We think posting sketches of the different approaches [when they're ready] on the project page (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/replying) will help with this.

Notes
So far, contributors have cited the following reasons as justification for the "simultaneous approach":

• Speed: "...wait several seconds for the application to switch context between the two views." Source: T155732#2964588
• Comparing wikitext with preview is difficult: "...new wikitext editor shows preview in place of wikitext, therefore an editor can not compare code with preview at all." Source: T155732#2961909

1. "Simultaneous approach": Contributors are be able to view their text input and a preview of how that text input would be rendered on the page simultaneously

As @matmarex noted in T235592#5646728, the "simultaneous approach" could be helpful in communicating to contributors they don't need to manually indent/outdent their replies or sign their comments.

I think the way User:Thnidu articulates why they value previews is helpful: "...a large part of their value for me is spotting errors of execution as well as errors of intention." See: this thread

Update: 4-Dec

• We are working to define how much of the previewing workflow we can design by EOD Friday, 6-Dec. Having minimal designs by this Friday should leave us enough time to have them implemented and live on the on the prototyper server by EOD Friday, 13-Dec, the time we're targeting for the initial round of usertesting.com testing to begin.
• In discussing the above this morning, we arrived at the following ranked open questions, which are now documented in the task description:
  • 1. Where is the live preview shown in relationship to the text input area? Above it? Below it? Somewhere else?
  • 2. How should the live preview be styled?
  • 3. What should be shown within the preview window as the preview is being populated?
  • 4. When should the preview window become visible to the user?
  • 5. Should there be a "fallback" experience on slow connections? What should this experience look like?
  • 6. Should contributors be able to hide and/or disable live previews?

Still open: what are the answers to the above questions in the context of mobile?

Task description update

• ADDED: link to the on-wiki conversation where we are asking for community members' feedback.

In T238177#5713661, @ppelberg wrote:

Update: 4-Dec

• We are working to define how much of the previewing workflow we can design by EOD Friday, 6-Dec. Having minimal designs by this Friday should leave us enough time to have them implemented and live on the on the prototyper server by EOD Friday, 13-Dec, the time we're targeting for the initial round of usertesting.com testing to begin.

6-Dec: update and next steps

• We are going to run the initial user test without making any significant changes [1] to the current UX
• Next week, we will test the live previewing functionality to be sure there is nothing fundamentally broken or confusing that needs to be fixed before the initial round of user testing begins on Friday, 13-Dec.
• Next week: we will start sketching ideas for what previewing could look like when it is implemented for real

cc @Esanders @iamjessklein

1. "Significant changes": e.g. we're not going to implement any new designs between now and the time we run an initial user test of the prototype

This will be high priority for next quarter.