[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #40432: Customizer: Should we stop contextually hiding features?

[WordPress Trac]

#40432: Customizer: Should we stop contextually hiding features?
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 Reporter:  melchoyce    |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Customize    |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:
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Comment (by zoonini):

 I'd like to strongly advocate for letting users access all widgets at all
 times.

 I've helped thousands of users set up their sites over 7 years, on both
 self-hosted and WordPress.com sites.

 While I've literally never heard a user confused or complain that they
 couldn't see a widget in the preview pane (while I'm sure it could
 happen), I've heard - hundreds of times - users confused at why they
 couldn't access a widget area they were trying to set up.

 Think about this scenario:

 A user is setting up their site and wants to set up all their widgets.
 '''They may not have created all their pages or added any posts yet, nor
 assigned specific page templates.'''

 They first want to set up widgets. They open the Customizer, but they
 don't see all their widget areas. T "I just want to set up my sidebar,"
 they say. "Why can't I see all the widget areas in the Customizer?"

 They see a message about not all widget areas being displayed on all
 views, but don't know what it means. They have no other pages to navigate
 to in the preview pane, even if they wanted to.

 We now have to explain that, no, it's *their* workflow that's wrong. They
 need to finish setting up their pages, figure out which templates to
 assign – and understand which widget areas are connected to those
 templates – and only then can they come back to the Customizer, figure out
 which page has the template they just assigned, and navigate to it.

 But wait! Even if they do all that, let's say they haven't added those new
 pages to their menu. They '''still''' have no way of accessing them in the
 preview pane and so '''still''' no way of setting up those widgets! Again,
 we have to guide them - "No, I'm afraid you still can't set up all your
 widgets -- need to add specific pages to your menu first."

 Can you see how frustrating and agonizing this is for users? It really
 makes people want to tear their hair out and give up on WordPress.

 There is a simple way to get around the small risk of users who might be
 confused by not seeing a widget in the preview pane, which is putting a
 small piece of wording below a widget section that's not currently being
 previewed. This is much, much, less frustrating for users than anything
 that involves preventing users from editing widgets under certain
 conditions.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40432#comment:7>
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