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

[WordPress Trac]

#40432: Customizer: Should we stop contextually hiding features?
-------------------------+------------------------------
 Reporter:  melchoyce    |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Customize    |     Version:  4.0
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:  ui
-------------------------+------------------------------

Comment (by ahortin):

 This just confirms what I've said over and over again, hiding options from
 users is extremely poor usability. It's literally been proven time and
 time again by huge software companies such as Microsoft.

 Having a message like..

 >''Your theme has 8 other widget areas, but this particular page doesn’t
 display them. You can navigate to other pages on your site while using the
 Customizer to view and edit the widgets displayed on those pages.''

 ..is pretty much useless. It doesn't tell the user anything of value,
 other than there's other widgets somewhere on the site. It doesn't give
 people the option to edit those widgets since they're hidden, and it
 doesn't tell the user where they can actually find these other widgets,
 which basically forces them to navigate all over their website (in the
 preview) until they find them.

 The fact that so many people don't realise that they can actually navigate
 to other pages within the Customizer preview is even more reason why these
 widgets shouldn't be hidden. It's a fantastic way of making people
 frustrated and confused. They'll browse to the blog page on their website,
 and either see an empty sidebar or a few default widgets, then they'll go
 back to the Customizer and not know how to edit the widget areas because
 they aren't being displayed (assuming the blog isn't on the homepage).

 This is one of the reasons why everyone prefers to use the original
 Widgets page to edit their widgets. They can see every single widget area
 that's on the site. Not only that, you don't have to constantly go back 'n
 forth to multiple panels just to update them all, which makes updating
 them significantly faster and less frustrating.

--
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40432#comment:48>
WordPress Trac <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress publishing platform