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Expose toolbar search feature in toolbar itself
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Description

In various apps, a toolbar search feature lives in the toolbar itself. In VE we have a help popup where people might go when they can't find the tool they are looking for. This would be a good place to teach people about VE's toolbar search (ctrl+shift+p).

Google docs: (Search the menus)

image.png (139×363 px, 7 KB)

GIMP: (Search and Run a Command)

image.png (191×374 px, 10 KB)

Done

Event Timeline

Change 928071 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] Create a tool to launch help completions from the toolbar

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/928071

Change 928071 merged by jenkins-bot:

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] Create a tool to launch help completions from the toolbar

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/928071

Change 928867 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (549e36956)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/928867

Change 928867 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (549e36956)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/928867

  1. Introducing a place within the toolbar's ? menu for people to search for the tool they're looking for sounds helpful...good spot
  2. Seeking a way to make the "in-surface search" (prob. a better term for this) more discoverable also seems worthwhile

...although, I find the current experience to feel off. "Off" in so far as, it's unexpected to me, and I assume for others, that clicking the Toolbar search option from within the ? menu will result in the search experience being opened elsewhere (it looks like the search opens wherever the cursor is placed).

I'd value @nayoub reviewing this before it's deployed.

Change 930637 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/930637

Change 930637 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/930637

Change 930541 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.13] HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/930541

Change 930541 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.13] HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/930541

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-06-15T20:57:21Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> Started scap: Backport for [[gerrit:930545|Revert "Targets: Use align:'after' instead of actionGroups" (T339292)]], [[gerrit:930541|HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json (T338254)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-06-15T20:58:45Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> thcipriani and matmarex: Backport for [[gerrit:930545|Revert "Targets: Use align:'after' instead of actionGroups" (T339292)]], [[gerrit:930541|HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json (T338254)]] synced to the testservers: mwdebug1002.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug2001.codfw.wmnet, mwdebug1001.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug2002.codfw.wmnet

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-06-15T21:13:30Z] <thcipriani@deploy1002> Finished scap: Backport for [[gerrit:930545|Revert "Targets: Use align:'after' instead of actionGroups" (T339292)]], [[gerrit:930541|HelpCompletionTool wasn't added to extension.json (T338254)]] (duration: 16m 09s)

...although, I find the current experience to feel off. "Off" in so far as, it's unexpected to me, and I assume for others, that clicking the Toolbar search option from within the ? menu will result in the search experience being opened elsewhere (it looks like the search opens wherever the cursor is placed).

I don't think it's that strange that you are returned to your cursor offset, for example if you click the citation button in the toolbar, you are returned to your cursor offset.

That said, the other tools I cited in the description bring the search widget into the toolbar. While that is an approach we could go down it would require a significant amount of work as it would be introducing UI infrastructure we don't have yet (inputs in toolbars). This task was just meant as a quick way to expose this new functionality.

Test wiki on Patch demo by ESanders (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task was deleted:

https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/bc1fc8b586/w/