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

[WordPress Trac]

#50699: Fix and improve arranging metaboxes
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  azaozz                               |       Owner:  azaozz
     Type:  task (blessed)                       |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  5.6
Component:  Administration                       |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch needs-testing needs-dev-   |     Focuses:  ui,
  note                                           |  accessibility
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by margaretschneider):

 Hey there, sorry, I have to nth what @knutsp, @pbiron, @johnjamesjacoby,
 and @garrett-eclipse mentioned. A colleague let me know about this
 proposed feature change, and I'm concerned that this is going to be an
 issue in a few ways. I see that it's well-intended, and I respect the work
 you've put into figuring out how this might work, but I can say, as a
 trainer at an agency who has taught more than a thousand people to use
 WordPress at this point, on many large publishing teams across the U.S.
 and beyond, using both the Classic editor and the Gutenberg block editor,
 there are a few issues here.

 First, Screen Options is often very difficult for people to even notice is
 there; it's unobtrusive bordering on invisible, and a large number of
 users, even after they've been taught about its existence repeatedly by an
 experienced trainer, forget about it or have trouble finding it. Sometimes
 they look right at it and just don't see it, because it looks like part of
 the browser UI, or they scroll down the page and then don't see it. Making
 something as essential as the ability to drag and drop items dependent
 upon being able to access Screen Options breaks patterns of visual
 personalization that are seen across the CMS. I'd guess it would mostly
 result in folks newer to the CMS rarely if ever dragging and dropping
 items, and the dashboard losing what little flexibility and utility it has
 for most users.

 Among other outcomes, it will likely make what you're describing, folks
 not making use of the ability to drag and drop things on the dashboard,
 the default behavior, and that would be a choice we're making for them. I
 hear that in your experience, being able to easily drag and drop items on
 the dashboard hasn't been essential, but for others, it is. I think making
 this harder to do is a step away from, not toward, improving the
 dashboard.

 Teaching people about Screen Options is a default part of our WordPress
 trainings, but as noted, folks still don't always use it, nor do they
 frequently need to, and it's increasingly something we don't get into in
 great detail with many clients. There simply isn't a lot that's useful or
 relevant to most folks on the dashboard from the start (which is its own
 issue; see below), and the only other place most folks I work with are
 likely to encounter Screen Options now is in places like the Posts list or
 the Classic editor interface for specific post types. In both of those
 places, we typically customize the interface to display certain types of
 meta boxes by default, depending on the needs for that post type, so folks
 don't often need to use Screen Options to customize their view and can
 safely ignore it. In many cases, as a result, Screen Options feels
 vestigial, and certainly isn't somewhere folks would think to go to enable
 drag-and-drop capabilities for meta boxes.

 I entirely agree that the dashboard could be  made more useful in most
 WordPress installs, and that it doesn't look amazing aesthetically when
 items aren't in those empty spots surrounded by a dashed border. I hope
 folks can work together to envision how we might make the dashboard more
 useful and surface more info there that's actively useful to users in the
 future. But forcing users to remember an arcane extra step to be able to
 personalize it isn't an ideal way to solve that, and will make it less
 likely that folks will make use of this personalization functionality.

 Second, being able to drag and drop boxes to personalize the order of
 items in the CMS is a feature common to not only items on the dashboard,
 but also to meta boxes in the Classic editor interface ''and'' the new
 Gutenberg block editor interface. This is something we've trained, again,
 hundreds of users to do in those areas, and as @helen noted, most of those
 users are not likely to look at release notes to learn about changes to
 the CMS. They will assume it's broken or that they're doing something
 wrong, and that will diminish their confidence in the CMS and their own
 abilities. Tiny changes like this that make the CMS less usable and, as
 others alluded to above, less accessible by adding steps and hiding
 options can inadvertently undermine our efforts to foster adoption of and
 advocacy for the CMS.

 Third, the new Gutenberg block editor interface does not have Screen
 Options as a concept anymore (it's hidden away in a different form), but
 you ''can'' still personalize the interface by dragging and dropping meta
 boxes to rearrange them. We make heavy use of meta boxes to provide
 options for adding metadata to articles for our publishing clients, so
 meta boxes aren't a concept that's wholly going to go away immediately
 with the block editor. As others noted, many plugins add meta boxes as
 well. The options for personalizing the article editing interface by
 choosing which meta boxes and features of the interface are even visible
 in the block editor now live under Options, at the bottom of the vertical
 "..." More menu, which folks are even less likely to discover unless
 they're specifically trained to do so. I always point it out in block
 editor trainings, but I don't know how many users make use of it. Many
 users ''do'' quickly and readily understand how to drag and drop meta
 boxes in the article editing interface, though, and frequently comment on
 its convenience.

 Overall, I feel like hiding the ability to drag and drop boxes on the
 dashboard would be a change for the worse that only marginally improves
 aesthetics, without much clear benefit in terms of usability. And it has
 several downsides in terms of consistency of UX elements within the CMS.
 As we move toward a future in which whole-site editing is possible and
 more areas of the CMS allow things to be dragged and dropped, such as in
 the Customizer for menus and in the block editor for meta boxes, we are
 taking a step backward if we require a set of arcane steps to enable
 dragging and dropping interface items.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50699#comment:28>
WordPress Trac <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress publishing platform