KEEPing it simple — fix the Keep menu!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Based on a post from yet another terminally confused novice today, and too many over the years, I present trivial UI fixes for comment and possible action:

Confusing as hell to novices, not unknown to trip up more experienced users. Looks like the checkbox controls both keep options, leads to hours of rage when paragraph lines won't behave as expected:

5 minute fix that probably doesn't even require a full testing protocol, clearer if still not as perfectly clear as it could be: 

10 minute fix, would likely require testing cycle but essentially eliminates the confusion by even a brand new user:

(Maybe default to/limit lowest number of lines to 1 just for an added sparkle of clarity?)

Absolutely zero actual functionality/core code change required with either. All just UI layout and hooks.

Maybe a visiting Employee can pass this along, saving a tedious year of marinating in the Suggestions box.

[Eugene Tyson]

Now that you mention it - it's not really bothered me to be honest. 

But I can see the benefits of making it clearer.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, to me this is an outlier among ID's many small faults. It throws many, many newcomers — we see some variation of "why won't my paragraph stay together" at least once a week. It has been known to throw the more experienced here, who don't think of the setting (or, sometimes, notice it in screen caps!) until several rounds of suggestions for fixes. It may not reach the level of a critical flaw, but it's persistent and frustrating and completely opaque until a user simply "learns" that the two settings are wholly independent, not interactive as the UI suggests.

And it's a case where there is no functional flaw or bad implementation or fault in the features themselves — both keep-prev and keep-next work about as perfectly as they could be asked to.

So it's all down to a badly designed snip of UI that does not make it clear that the two settings are independent. The fix is entirely on the cosmetic end, with one tiny improvement possible by making Keep-With-Next a specific toggle and not a murky "inherent" setting

That everyone here with some degree of experience knows all this is not any reason for this not to have been fixed long ago, because it's still collecting trophies from among every new/learning wave of users.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

@Eugene Tyson I think it may not be confusing to you/us because we remember when it just had the Keep with Next option. The Keep with Previous was added later so it wasn't as confusing. I can definitely see where it would be confusing to someone new(er).

@James Gifford—NitroPress I like your third option, but was add Line to Keep with Previous, so "Keep with Previous Line". 

[Scott Falkner]

The added checkbox is not only superfluous in the third image, it’s confusing. If that’s not checked willl the paragraph not keep with the next zero lines? What does it mena to not keep with the next zero lines. Just leaving it at zero accomplished the task.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I would "gray out" the line numbers until the check box is activated. That would make it clear what option the line numbers refers to.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Excellent gloss, but now we're up to a 15-minute fix, which means v26.0. 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I firmly disagree; your viewpoint is based on already knowing how the two UI lines work. A UI should be intuitive and self-teaching, not something to be memorized (especially by tripping over it).

While the element as-is is streamlined and elegant, it's simply not clear that there is a functional difference between Zero and Not-Zero... not until you learn, are taught, or are beaten into understanding that. A superfluous checkbox adds clarity and costs nothing.

I mean  — The ID UI is filled with elements that could be similarly streamlined, as long as you can teach each and every user that "zero" always means "null this function out" — as it does to any coder, but not to some far, far smaller body of actual users who don't think that way.

[Mike Witherell]

In general I agree with this idea. Personally, I would put the Keep with Previous last at the bottom end of the dialog box, because its use is rarer.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, endless refinements but any of these changes would be about 176% more time than was put into the layout in the first place. It looks like way too much of the "mirror the code" settings, terminology and thought I had to argue against back in the days when I worked more closely with what we used to call programmers.

Not sure that frequency of use is a strong factor; making it Previous/Next follows logical layout thinking. And an overall rethink of the panel to integrate Previous/Together/Next would be worth considering as well.

But mostly, I just want to stop banging my head on the desk when I hit each new post of "Why won't that last line stay in the first column? I've checked EVERYTHING!"