Issue composing textarea feedback

[janbrasna]

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Can't find any info about any new message composing experience, no "beta"/"preview" badge, or a link to post feedback or opt-out of the feature. Nonetheless my writing UI (in issues only, not in PRs or discussions) have changed from the one used the past years, to a newer, more simplified one. So I'm posting here.

Besides that it makes hard to distinguish editable vs. preview-only mode (as the focus halo ring now doesn't highlight the actual textarea, but the whole panel component with toolbars et al., which when not consistent with the rest of authoring surfaces across the site makes for a weird affordance to adapt to, it's currently extremely unusable when authoring longer texts, as the textarea stretches beyond the size of the viewport, making toolbar unreachable:

(the "og" editor expanded with content, but stopped ca half-way on the page height — this new one runs beyond the available viewport, and manual tweaks in the UA is overridden again after typing, so my attempts to shrink it to use are constantly reverted, forcing this unusable layout…)

Before, at some dimensions, only the authored content scrolled, keeping the UI in place. Now, with more and more content written, the UI as a whole stretches and scrolls away…

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[labudis]

@janbrasna thanks for sharing your feedback regarding the composer. I logged your feedback for the team to review.

[janbrasna]

Thanks @labudis! My main concern is:

• until the same editor is rolled site-wide, incl. PR, reviews, commit comments etc. (or until actually my a11y issues below resolved) — I'd prefer to opt out to have all the authoring experience consistent between the different surfaces. However the new editor is not accompanied by a "preview" badge, with means to disable etc. incl. in one's feature preview settings.
• input accessibility outline is not outlining the actual form element, but an arbitrary section that's not all writeable, so while it may have a value aesthetically, it's a little puzzling affordance; also it makes the whole textarea styled "flat", not defined — i.e. compared to the classic editor it's not immediately visible it's an editable form element ready to start typing.
• my UA (Safari) allows me to adjust any size of textarea to my liking, and while I appreciate the input stretching with more content, the original behavior of stopping at a reasonable size; and/or not interfering with my custom sizing changes in browser afterwards, was superior to the new logic of stretching far beyond the space available, having "scrollbars within scrollbars", and constantly taking over the size even after my adjustments for my writing comforts.

[janbrasna]

(don't take it the wrong way: I'm not in the usual anti-change crowd; and I realize form element styling is hard in general, so this is just trying to point out some day-to-day usability kinks by examples, that just surprised me…)

[janbrasna]

BUG: The new issue authoring interface shows that CMD+enter submits the form; however the same is not shown on issue comments using the new editor, but still triggers — i.e. I just unexpectedly submitted an unfinished issue comment just by hitting that shortcut — there's no warning or clear affordance like it's in the new issue flow, but works the same way.

Makes sense:

This was unexpected to submit tho:

[janbrasna]

NIT: While I love to see the toolbar buttons for "References" (hash#) and "Mention" (handle@) gone to save space, the removal of "Attach files" to only keep it under the textarea among the action buttons is a little inconvenient — I'd prefer to have it where the muscle memory expects it, space allowing.

(EDIT: The issue is related to the above, stretching of the textarea taller than the viewport — if I then scroll back to reach the toolbar, it's inconvenient to again scroll down to reach the attachment button that's missing from the toolbar… when it's "below the fold" now;D)

[labudis]

BUG: The new issue authoring interface shows that CMD+enter submits the form; however the same is not shown on issue comments using the new editor, but still triggers — i.e. I just unexpectedly submitted an unfinished issue comment just by hitting that shortcut — there's no warning or clear affordance like it's in the new issue flow, but works the same way.

I've logged this as a bug - thanks for reporting!

[janbrasna]

Also noticed: After the textarea stretches crazy tall with content, if I delete most of the content and start on a first line, the textarea doesn't shrink back for better reachability, it stays page-long even with the content being again just a line or two now…

[labudis]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention @janbrasna!