Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 15 replies
  • Subscribers 2371 subscribers
  • Views 1277 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

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!

Parents

  • 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.

  • 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 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!

  • 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

Reply Children
No Data