[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #21273: Automatically open help panel

[WordPress Trac]

#21273: Automatically open help panel
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 Reporter:  ptahdunbar   |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  3.5
Component:  Help/About   |     Version:
 Severity:  trivial      |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch    |
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Comment (by helenyhou):

 I agree with Jane - I think it's possible that it would be disorienting to
 a user to do it when the page loads. Imagine if they reload the page with
 the hash in it, or bookmark it that way. It will always happen, regardless
 of their intent, and for non-technical users who, in my experience, tend
 to bookmark something new once they get there and use that bookmark from
 that point on, having it scroll-and-slide-down every single time would
 surely be frustrating.

 A much more common use case than the plugin row links in my mind would be
 for looking for guidance when on a screen, e.g. "What am I supposed to put
 in this field again and why?" When you think of using it that way,
 clicking a link to an anchor to slide open the available contextual help,
 which doesn't take you away from your current position on the page because
 it's fixed to the top, makes a lot more sense.

 Thinking on it more, I suppose the question then becomes whether or not
 there should be something in core that makes it easy to specify that a
 link will open contextual help (binding an action), since technically you
 could do it now on your own. A class to use for the link, JS that looks
 for `#tab-panel*` in href's, or something else?

 Replying to [comment:5 ptahdunbar]:
 > Replying to [comment:4 helenyhou]:
 > > Seems like it'd be much more likely that the link would be to help
 located on the current screen, so it would need to work whenever, not just
 on page load.
 >
 > - I was just pointing out that it works when linking to help panels
 between pages. It works whenever.

 Does it currently or do you mean it could? I just tested again and it
 doesn't work when it's linking within the page, and the JS tells me it's
 just activating on document ready.

 > - FF works smoothly on my mba. don't tell me ur on a winbox ;p

 Nope, also OSX. It appears to put the top corner at the real 0,0, which is
 behind the admin bar.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21273#comment:8>
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