[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #50699: Fix and improve arranging metaboxes

[WordPress Trac]

#50699: Fix and improve arranging metaboxes
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 Reporter:  azaozz          |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement     |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  5.6
Component:  Administration  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch     |     Focuses:  ui, accessibility
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Comment (by afercia):

 Regarding the visibility of the Sortable areas, quoting some
 considerations from #49288 that maybe worth considering in this ticket.

 1
 On the dashboard, there's some JS in place to make the Sortable areas not
 visible when there's only one visible postbox. Historically, this was the
 case for the `subscriber` role. Also, users can always hide all postboxes
 except one. The JS implements a check for `visible == 1` where `visible`
 is the amount of visible postboxes.
 However, since the introduction of the "WordPress Events and News"
 dashboard widget, this check doesn't make much sense because the
 subscriber role now sees two widgets by default. At the very least, it
 should check for `2` or the whole behavior be rethinked.

 2
 In the Classic editor page and everywhere else the `advanced` Sortable
 area is in place, I think it's important to take into consideration this
 historical reconstruction from @azaozz, see: ticket:49288#comment:72

 > Right. The drop areas on the old Edit Post screen are actually three.
 However the second and third are always shown together. If I remember
 correctly the reason the third is three is that postboxes added by plugins
 were put by default in it; at the bottom under the editor. Also think at
 some point (over 10 years ago) that area used to be shown separately, but
 now is always shown together with the second area. So when dragging of
 postboxes was added to that screen, the three areas were kept as back-
 compat, but the third was (mostly) disabled. The users could drag boxes
 out but there's no reason for them to add boxes back in it, as they would
 show and work in exactly the same way as when in the second area. In that
 terms the changes here can either maintain the previous behavior or make
 the third area "droppable" again. This won't change how the screen works.

 So maybe one option could be considering to remove the `advanced` area
 entirely.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50699#comment:6>
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