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Cleaning up table of contents and navigation in RoadTest Reviews

cstanton

Hello,

We've realised that there's some duplication with tables of contents, particularly when it comes to RoadTest Reviews, and with our new Project Articles ( Ho-Ho-Hold on a minute, is that a blog? A new way to submit your project! ).

Verint, as a platform, has a way of inserting 'tables of contents' like this:

image

But there are problems with its formatting and how it works. For RoadTest Reviews as an example, we have an automatic generation of a table of contents which can look like this:

image

This helps to separate the content from the contents list when listing the content on Google, sharing on social media, etc. So we use this method in RoadTest Reviews and Project Articles.

Because we have this, it means that it's a duplicate of the 'insert table of contents' and you can end up with a heading of "table of contents" in this new list, and it becomes a bit cumbersome and confusing, it doesn't make sense to have both. 

So ultimately, we won't.

For Project Articles and RoadTest Reviews we're removing the ability to insert the table of contents from the menu.

Instead? Use headings, marked with the <hx> tags, where 'x' is a number. A lot of members already do this, but I realised we haven't actually pointed this out anywhere.

You can find heading formatting under the Format menu:

image

These menus should always be visible when using the Community from a laptop or desktop, maybe even a tablet. It may not always be visible when using a mobile device.

Thanks for reading!

  • Hi Christopher,

    Will this mean the text are is narrowed?

    Is there a way to regain the text area by (say) having the left-side ToC being collapsible automatically?

    This will be a big issue with especially long articles, which will be hard to navigate long slim page content if the user doesn't create very well named (and very well organized) subject headings.

    Secondly, has it been tested what happens on content where the user does not have any headings? Will the text area expand to fill the gap, or will it remain narrow? I think to keep some flexibility, the text area should fill the gap if there are no headings.

  • but what happens to the roadtest reviews from before verint?

    I see mine all have a working table of contents on the left side, and a non working on top of my reviews.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Yeah, I've also previously expressed my dislike of the sidebar ToC because it takes up space and mucks up printability of the article. I manually trudge though the inspector and delete the div when reading to make myself happy ...

    - Gough

  • in reply to gpolder
    gpolder said:
    but what happens to the roadtest reviews from before verint?

    I'm not sure what you mean? All roadtest reviews from before verint were copied over to verint.

    gpolder said:
    I see mine all have a working table of contents on the left side, and a non working on top of my reviews

    Then that should probably be removed, would you like to link to some of what you mean?

  • in reply to Gough Lui
    Gough Lui said:
    I've also previously expressed my dislike of the sidebar ToC because it takes up space and mucks up printability of the article

    I've raised a support ticket about that, so it should be worked on.

    shabaz said:
    Is there a way to regain the text area by (say) having the left-side ToC being collapsible automatically?

    It does collapse in mobile view, I thought I had raised a support ticket about it to behave similarly on desktop. I'll have to check up on that, thanks for the reminder.

    shabaz said:
    Secondly, has it been tested what happens on content where the user does not have any headings?

    From what I've seen it simply doesn't populate with links and remains. Not ideal.

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Same here. Something just feels wrong with the narrow format in conjunction with the limited good usage of the left and right sides. Jive had it spot on, that felt like a good width. Even if it were just 15-20% wider that might feel better (e.g.   can the auto-sizing with HTML 5, i.e. auto adjustment between mobile views and desktop views, simply push out of the way more of the side panes, until the user really stretches the page wide) , or give us control of adding stuff into the columns, because not all articles are going to look readable in a narrow style. I resorted to self-help and deliberately remove header tags in content if I think that automated ToC thing will kick in. I know that's not good either, but what can we do. It feels that something needs to change, and if it can't be a lot due to Verint etc, then some compromise would be good, from my perspective at least a bit more space, and for it to be tested on longer content as well as content where users forget to add headings. Anyway, from a broader perspective, it's awesome that the site is now at a good stage where more focus can be on such tweaks I hope!

  • Hi Christopher,

    This isn't directly related, but I really think it's important to raise it here too, since it does affect tutorials and roadtests a lot:

    Any chance we can have a few more styles added for inset types of messages? For instance, Note and Warning boxes are useful. Even a single style for inset content would be awesome, called 'Alert' style perhaps. I think it will really help some types of content. 

    image

    The screenshot below shows another example of a Note box.

    Also, if the code box font size perhaps could be increased by a point or two (or for it to respond to the text size option in the Editor toolbar, so that the author can size it appropriate to the type of content that is in there), that would look a lot better I think (it feels a bit too small currently). The code in the screenshot below looks more readable.

    image

    The code in the screenshot above looks more readable/similar sized to the body text, than in the screenshot below. Also, the code block below looks incomplete without a border and copy button, like in the screenshot above, 

    image

    I know these are quite cosmetic tweaks, but as mentioned the site is behaving well, so even the developers may like to work on the fun artistic/cosmetic stuff for a while, instead of bugs hehe  : )

    Also, the only e-mail notifications I'm getting to this forum post are for comments I write. I'm seeing no notifications to e-mail when anyone else comments. I know this is in Verint's pile but in the meantime if there was a way to change that Reply button to Reply & Subscribe that would be awesome. I actually can't see where I should click to subscribe for e-mail alerts:

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

    The 'new' table of contents which is auto-created from headings is custom from the development team, so I would hope they can change how it behaves without having to raise it with or wait on Verint Slight smile

  • in reply to shabaz
    shabaz said:
    I actually can't see where I should click to subscribe for e-mail alerts

    It's always under the 'more' option

    image

    shabaz said:
    I know this is in Verint's pile but in the meantime

    Unfortunately, I'm consistently told this is in Verint's wheelhouse and should be customised by Verint to be an 'out of the box' feature. As you know I do constantly bring this one up with the team, and frustratingly it's simply not on Verint's priority list - as they've told me directly.

  • in reply to cstanton

    just like here:

    /products/roadtest/rv/roadtest_reviews/254/3ghz_spectrum_analyz

    The upper table of contents doesn't work any more.

    Same for all my other pre verint reviews.