Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Created attachment 15774 [details]
screenshot - before and after Preview

Split from bug 67192:

(Bartosz Dziewoński wrote)
> Why is Flow hiding the text area when you're previewing a comment, and
> replacing it with a huge green message bubble? That's confusing. Please just
> do the normal MediaWiki thing for this and no complicated explanations will
> be necessary.

I'll attach a screenshot from http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Flow

I think this is an interesting new experiment. It reminds me of Slashdot comments, where one can only Edit OR Preview, but not both at the same time. (eg. try previewing a test reply at http://ask.slashdot.org/story/14/06/27/1957239/ )

The normal MediaWiki thing, is to use the message:
[[MediaWiki:Previewnote]]
and then show the previewed text
and then show the edit box,
[Which enables us to both Preview and Edit the wikitext simultaneously.]

The downsides of the normal MediaWiki thing, which I believe this experiment is trying to solve, are that it:
* Doubles the quantity of text onscreen
* Pushes the text I'm replying to, further up the window (often above the fold)
* The "This is just a preview" message might be missed by newcomers
* other?

The downsides of the new experiment are:
* Doubles the amount clicking required, for editors who use "preview" a lot. (which should be encouraged!)
* Can't Preview and Edit at the same time. (eg. If I'm wondering how a complicated template will work, I'll:  preview, tweak, preview, tweak, preview, tweak, preview, save. -- Having the Previewed-text stay static on my screen, but just changing slightly each time I preview, is immensely helpful. Versus, having to retain it in my memory whilst I'm in edit-mode)

(Sidenote: I use the UserScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Js/ajaxPreview which makes previewing especially fast, and solves the whole Regular-Preview problem of "Refreshes the entire page, and moves you to #Top".)

I would suggest returning to the normal preview-method. (Especially because the javascript version currently on mediawiki.org/enwiki seem to use something akin to the ajaxPreview, which is nice and fast and non-jarring. (albeit needs aethetic updates))
Then also, place the standard [[MediaWiki:Previewnote]] message in a tooltip at the side, next to the "reply" button. That will provide less inline-text to distract someone whilst they're composing a post. (and less new messages to translate! cf. the original bug)
But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. :)