[Pmwiki-users] Less clunky Edit Page

[Ted Stern]

Given that one of the stated intentions of PmWiki is to be easier for the
user, I was a bit surprised when one of my site users complained about the
Edit Page interface.

He is used to, e.g., Yahoo Message Boards, where you enter text, hit Return
and you're done.

He called the Edit Page form "clunky as all get-out".  Which it is, from a
typophobic minimal vi-users point of view ;-).

Thinking about this a bit, I was wondering how I could change the layout in a
couple of ways:

 - Move Author to the very top of the page.  If no Author is entered when the
   page text is modified and the user hits Enter, the page should refresh
   with the Author field highlighted in red and the note "Author field is
   required", possibly with a reminder to enter it as "FirstnameLastname".

 - Below Author would come the Text entry, still pretty much as it is now, but
   only until the user first hits Enter.

   Preview would be mandatory.  After hitting Enter, the Preview would come up
   at the top with lots of strong reminders that it is only a preview and not
   saved, and a pointer to the text field, now below the preview.

   On the next Enter, a pop-up should come up asking "Preview again, Save or
   Cancel Edit?"

The current buttons could still be there to shortcut past pop-ups.

In other words, the form has to assume that the most clueless user would not
read the entire page before starting and needs to be reminded every step of
the way.

This is one of the biggest impediments to getting users to adopt the wiki
here, BTW.

Surely somebody has played with this before, right?  I have zero PHP
experience, so I'm looking for a plugin solution.

Ted
-- 
 Ted Stern                                 Applications Group
 Cray Inc.                               office: 206-701-2182
 411 First Avenue South, Suite 600         cell: 206-383-1049
 Seattle, WA 98104-2860                     FAX: 206-701-2500

 Frango ut patefaciam -- I break that I may reveal
 (The Paleontological Society motto, equally apropos for debugging)