Thank you. This was indeed @yyoung’s first proposal. The problem was the URL to be submitted (the clean URL) would not be visible from the list. It would require to point the mouse on the input field to see it in the bubble, so it doesn’t allow to visually check the whole form before submitting it.
After another discussion, two potential ways out are investigated:
either switching the content of the input box to raw/clean URL on focus/blur and showing clean URL in bubble on focus,
or adding auto-focus to input field in popover to prevent requiring an extra click to edit existing URL.
An initial bit of feedback from me. I paste in lots of URLs when adding releases. Often linking to Pink Floyd discographies which are links that are never auto-corrected. So I’ll be using this a lot.
Short version: Question: why does the edit box disappear? Can’t this be left open and editable until I hit FINISH? Now when I make an error I have to hit an edit button for an edit box and OK the edit
Longer waffle:
The rest of the editor always leaves text ready to re-edit without clicking pencils and OK buttons.
It is much clearer to tweak what you have just added if it is still in an edit box.
At least one of the sites I copy\paste links from I need to paste the link then edit it. Often I’d only remember to do the edit at the end. Which will now mean an extra couple of clicks to open an edit box for an edit box to do an edit and hit OK.
Keyboard navigation has now doubled the number of tab presses I’ll need to do for each item. (Even more if I make a mistake and need that edit box for the edit box)
As a test, I pasted an Amazon link in, but now I have to select Amazon in the drop down on the left making things slower than the past automation. Even messier for keyboard navigation as I have to go backwards.
I am probably not the best person to ask as I don’t like work flow being redesigned. It is unsettling, but I’ll get used to it. I just don’t really see the benefit of making us click so much more just for some pretty pencils. An edit pop-up with OK buttons for an edit box just seems really slow.
I also realise that “keyboard navigation” is not a thing people do who are editing on phones, but some of us are old skool.
This is also going to kill even more import scripts. Why strip out edit boxes? The site redesigns lately seem to be having a really bad effect on the add-on scripts so many of us use as those script writers don’t have time to keep up with the changes.
Why strip out edit boxes? Is that going to happen everywhere else on a Release Edit page? Date selectors? Country choices? Label selection? Is this a start of a double click every edit? I don’t see the need of a style change like that when we enter data in a data entry mode then hit Finish to make it static again. It just looks weird and out of place when editing a Release. Your current forms are so good and efficient and obvious in use.
Sorry to sound negative. This is just plain honest feedback. I just don’t really see the benefit of slowing down editing to add pencils and extra OK buttons to an Edit Form.
Edit: Maybe I can see the point of an edit pencil if you are changing a single old URL on an artist page or something. But it is a big time killer on a data entry form for adding a new Release.
Thank you all for your feedbacks, this is exactly what this thread is for! As you see, this change is still in testing and open for improvement. We’ll reconsider the effect on editing efficiency and accessibility, since other coming features will also affect keyboard navigation, e.g. grouping links by URL as shown in the screenshot. Meanwhile, we would like to hear more feedbacks, common usecases, your expectations and your thoughts on how to improve this UI.
The aim is to show the originally pasted URL next to the cleaned-up URL so that the editor realises that their URL has been changed?
In my opinion, because the current editing interface is good for me, I would just display the original URL in the same fashion as the current error messages, such as:
This relationship already exists.
These messages don’t mess up with the tabindex of keyboard navigation.
The workflow is the same as when there are no errors, so it is good. No additional keys, no additional clicks.
As it’s not an error, it could be a warning in yellow and not blocking, just informing that:
We have thought about that before, its disadvantage is that it can’t preserve raw URL, but it’s a minimal change indeed.
Apart from that, what do you think of the screenshot of ‘Grouping links by URL’? Because the type select is placed below the input box, an extra tab is needed, are you OK with that, and how often do you use keyboard to navigate to the type select?
The layout is adjusted, and the delete icon is removed if there’s only one relationship. (You got it all right!)
There’s still an ‘add new type’ button, but I’m considering to prevent it from tab selection since it’s not commonly used(I guess), might also put it on the same line with other icons to make the UI more compact.
Basically you’re right, so are you OK with this extra tab?
Always. Every time I enter data as it is faster when you have been used to it for decades. It also causes much less pain in mouse usage. I often paste discography links that cannot be auto-detected so shift-tab back to the selection box.
this does not look to bad to me as it is keeping edit boxes and just swapping the type box to after instead of before. This is a more logical working order. Paste link, tab, tab, select type with arrows, tab away to next data.
This is a little confusing. Everything clickable should be tab selectable. I get confused by this “add relationship” as surely “add another relationship” will have relatively low usage. Would it not be easier to automate that bit? When same URL is pasted for a second time, then the second type is selected and edit boxes get merged? Would that not be more efficient too?
What I see here is a big improvement as it removes the pencils. I have to say I laughed when I saw the edit box for an edit box also included OK and CANCEL buttons as I thought modern GUIs were killing those.
In my experience, 95% of the URL I paste have an auto-detected-and-set type.
So, even if generally I heavily use the keyboard, I don’t need it often specifically for URL type.
Not you?
This is what adds one Tab between each new URL.
But as it should not be an input but only text (no tabindex) for auto-detected-and-set types (95% of the time for me), it should still be OK.
The input box should keep cleaned-up URL for final check before submitting, so if you’re inputting URL instead of pasting, you would be interrupted by clean-up. And what if you edit the clean URL? Which one should be kept as raw URL?
Some days I’ll be working a lot on Pink Floyd concert bootlegs. There are some brilliant Floyd discographies out there cataloguing these same bootleg releases. Being able to link these as discographies is really handy feature of MB. That way an MB release can have two or three external links to validate the source, and supply more details, reviews, etc.
When I add something like Bandcamp that will be using an import script. Which will all get borken when these changes appear
If it can be tabbed straight past it becomes a “double tap” instead of a single tap. Much easier to deal with than the pop-up edit box for an edit box with built in tab to OK button excess. Those boxes were a minefield of many extra taps as OK was last in tab order.
Adding a button for very small use cases is adding a click to every case for rare use scenarios. I guess this is for bandcamp? As long as it is selectable by tab, but also can be tabbed over, it is quicker that a edit box for an edit box like on the test server.
I did never feel the necessity myself of seeing how was the URL that I had just copied a few seconds ago.
Just a simple inline warning that the URL has been changed, maybe, why not, without having to show before/after.