[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #39087: Customizer: Add indicator when additional widget areas are hidden

[WordPress Trac]

#39087: Customizer: Add indicator when additional widget areas are hidden
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 Reporter:  shireling                            |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement                          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  4.7.4
Component:  Customize                            |     Version:  3.9
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-ux-feedback has-patch needs-     |     Focuses:
  testing has-screenshots                        |
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Comment (by ahortin):

 I still believe hiding options from users is a really, really bad
 decision. Displaying the message "There is 1 other widget area registered
 for this theme but they are not shown on the current page" is pretty much
 useless if the user doesn't know where the widget area is, and if it's a
 new theme, this is most likely going to be the case.

 I can't stress enough, you're making things harder for the end user by
 hiding options and making them search for them, or possibly, navigate to
 multiple pages just to find where the widget is so that they can edit it.

 In Microsoft Office 2000, MS implemented a new feature called "Adaptive
 Menus". The idea was that the top-level menus would only show a subset of
 commonly used commands and the rest were hidden. MS got absolutely
 hammered for this decision, by usability experts and end users, which is
 why they dropped it a couple of years later.

 To quote a leading usability expert, "Interfaces that temporarily hide the
 UI elements to emphasize content often increase the interaction cost,
 cognitive load, and the number of attention switches." - Nielsen Norman
 Group (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/zen-mode/)

 As I mentioned in a previous comment above, instead of hiding the sidebar
 and showing a notification when the preview isn't showing that particular
 sidebar, why not show ALL the sidebars ALL the time, and simply show a
 notification advising people that the current sidebar wont be displayed on
 the currently previewed page. This way you give people the choice. If they
 want to see a preview of the widgets, they can navigate to another page,
 and if they don't care about the preview or if they don't know where the
 sidebar is, at least they can still update the sidebar with something.

 @westonruter On a side note, your `not-rendered-widget-area-
 notification.mov` video above doesn't work. I tried downloading the file
 and it wont play in either VLC or Quicktime.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/39087#comment:19>
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