Ability to move annotation target

Hey!
I noted that when the annotation creation popup box is still open, you can select a different text and use the keyboard shortcut again, but the text to be annotated stays at its original position. Is this an intended design choice? While I cannot speak for every user, I think this could cause annoyance for some. The change would likely minimal and make the annotation tool more expected.

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Hello! What version of XWiki and browser are you using?

I couldn’t reproduce it on my local instance (very customized for annotations so not super reliable) or on Sandbox - XWiki .

If I didn’t understand your point and your problem is that nothing happens when you try to use the shortcut again. IMO it’s not that bad UIX wise because the bubble stays pointing to the old text. Everything tells you: “the shortcut didn’t do anything”. I’d say this could be considered a feature: we don’t want to have the user open up multiple annotation bubbles at the same time (sometimes because of a bug…). This way we can ensure that they actually finish what they initiated and clearly say “I’m done, next annotation” by either submitting or cancelling the addition of the first annotation. If we allow the user to not finish their action, then we need to take into account all the use cases where there’s multiple open to make sure we cover them correctly: Do we allow multiple bubbles for the same text selection? Do we set a limit on the amount of bubbles or just keep adding them?

In my opinion this is more a new feature than a bug, and I’m pretty sure that would just make the annotations more difficult to use for most users.

Hello! I just reproduced it again in the XWiki 18.0.1 Demo installation with the Standard Flavor preinstalled in Mozilla Firefox 147.
Yes, that is the point. It is obvious that the shortcut did not do anything but you might wonder why that is the case. I did not mean to propose the ability to open multiple annotations at the same time. I think that “Ctrl + M” is nothing you press by accident, so it can just open an emptied annotation box at the new target and close the other one.
Sure, you can also close the other annotation box instead but you cannot do that using a keyboard shortcut AFAIK. I was wondering if it were more flexible when the keyboard shortcut always works and handles cases where an annotation was already started elsewhere (by accident or you decide to annotate elsewhere now)

Hi!
So in a few words:

Minor new feature: when an annotation creation bubble is already created, the annotation creation action should close the current bubble and open a new one instead of doing nothing.

I agree with this improvement, here’s my +1

@tkrieck What do you think about this improvement?

This might be an usability problem. Temporary dropdowns are supposed to be easy to close: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 “Dismissible”. Right now, the only way to close it is with the button (one click or a few keyboard actions). I’ll include “close the bubble when pressing escape” as an improvement to the bubble that could be provided with Loading... .

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Hi @Mali and @CharpentierLucas If I understood correctly this would only close the annotation bubble if it’s currently empty, right? So the flow would be somehting like:
1 - User selects a text
2 - Hits meta + m and the annotation bubble appears
3 - User realizes that the wrong piece of text was selected
4 - User selects another piece of text and hits meta + M again
5 - New bubble is shown at the new location.

If that’s the case I agree with the proposal. +1

If the bubble already has any type of content then IMO it wouldn’t be ok to close the bubble, even by asking confirmation, users might agree with something without reading it.

We could introduce new shortcuts to the bubble also:
Meta + Enter to save it,
esc to cancel

Thanks for the proposal

I did not think about it. I would’ve kept this behaviour the same not matter of what’s contained in the editor, but this has the drawback of maybe deleting some content unexpectedly. In case there’s content, IMO the best behaviour would be to open a modal to ask the user for confirmation of deleting the content of the previous box.

Oh okay :smiley:


I think it’s important in this situation to still provide feedback to the user so that they can understand that they are not facing a bug (“why is the comment creation not working here? Nothing happens so it must be broken”). Maybe we could add a warning XNotification on the bottom of the screen (a UI similar the edit mode save action confirmation) to explain: finish the current annotation by either closing the editor or validating its content before being able to create a new one. This is a bit like a modal, but with more friction so we’re ensuring the user understand what they do.

Thanks!

I mean, we could just save it automatically (only when there’s content) and let the user delete the wrong annotation if needed. It’s a very specific situation.

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The annotation bubble should definitely close when it it currently empty.

I also agree with Lukas that feedback should be provided to the user when we are not closing the popup.