Last modified: 2012-12-02 18:09:51 UTC
The current process to unwatch a page, from the user's point of view, goes: 1. Click "unwatch" 2. Confirmation page is shown 3. Click "Return to [article]" 4. Article page is shown. This could be reduced to: 1. Click "unwatch" 2. Article page is shown, with a banner like "This page has been removed from your watchlist". The same enhancement could be applied to watching pages, saving pages (simply adding a confirmation banner), and logging in. As Tels reports, the current process for logging in when editing a page is as follows: 1 while loged out, click "edit" 2 see msg about need to log int, click "login" 3 (firefox fills in pwd/user) press button "login" 4 click "go back to page" 5 click "edit" This could be reduced to something as short as: 1. while logged out, click "edit" 2. login box is shown, with note about what happens if you edit without logging in. Below this, the normal editing page apppears, if you want to remain logged out. 3. fill in your login details and press "login" 4. the edit page is shown again, obviously without the login box. This has the positive side effect of enhancing the visual cue that you're editing in IP mode.
r18598 from Dan Li / Simetrical goes towards one-click for watch/unwatch, using AJAX. Currently disabled by default, hence not accessible on the Wikipedia.
*** Bug 9154 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bug 9154 is similar, but with a different focus: when a login is made that has the "returnto" attribute, after a successful login redirect the user directly to the page. This could be configurable, or could be implemented by a hook of the UserLoginComplete event if function successfulLogin() would skip further processing when receiving a false return from this hook. This could improve the user experience and allow direct authenticated access to a page. This feature would enable using a wiki as a context-sensitive help for an application.
Rather than AJAX for the login how about an instant redirect with some sort of banner displayed saying "You are now logged in"?
That's what this bug requests, per comment #0.
That sounds better than the current separate "Successful" page. With the recent addition of the AJAX Watcher to default MediaWiki installations, which puts banners at the top of the page on watch and unwatch, a banner denoting a login success on top of the original page wouldn't be out of place. In fact, why not take this a bit further and have a login box pop up via AJAX (or just show a hidden content section) when the login link is clicked? Many sites do this, and it really streamlines the interface, removing an entire page load. Login checking could be integrated into the box, so it reloads the "dialog" separately from the rest of the page if the login fails. Special:Userlogin would be kept for non-AJAX browsers.
All of that is possible by now, see Extensions:AjaxLogin
This should be enabled by default for all installs -- we shouldn't be requiring extensions for enhancements to basic functionality.
I think it's desirable. But even if done via AJAX, there still need to be a page load for getting the login box.
The original bug was fixed time ago. If it was desired to show the watch tab to anons and perform an AJAX login, a new bug should be opened.
