Data views table layout: Enable fields to be visually combined with title

[jameskoster]

In the Templates data view the spacing between title and description can become awkward and difficult to read:

Similarly, in the Pages data view the featured images feels a bit isolated from the title, and has no material benefit living a dedicated column:

In both cases, it could be good to visually combine these fields into a single cell. E.g.:

[jameskoster]

Noting that this problem needs more design.

I'm a bit concerned that disabling/enabling fields based on layout opens a can of worms that we're not ready to tackle just yet. Instead I wonder if such a field can be made to work in all layouts. If not, another approach may be required here.

[getdave]

@jameskoster Has there been any progress on this Issue that you are aware of? Do you still see this as required for WP 6.5?

My understanding is that the primary task is to combine the title and description fields into a new Summary field.

Just a note that we'd need to be careful about a11y when implementing this.

[jameskoster]

No not required, mostly because the existing table display matches the new one.

The path forward here isn't entirely clear to me.

The visuals are improved (quite significantly) by combining certain fields in Table layout, and a 'Summary' field is one way to go about it. However, such a field makes much less sense in Grid + List layouts. It also enables users to display the summary and all of its constituent fields in a single table, so it's a bit of a flaky solution.

The original suggestion was to literally combine certain fields in a single table cell as required, rather than adding the 'Summary'. I don't recall the exact reason, but @youknowriad wasn't a fan.

[youknowriad]

Combining fields is fine but it's more complex. These UIs (dataviews) are generated, so combining fields mean we need to define precisely how fields can be combined, what UI to offer the user to combine fields... Is it something to allow for multiple layouts or specific to table... I think the complexity is not worth it for now at least.

[colorful-tones]

Based on the recent Editor Triage async session - I'm moving this into the Punted to 6.6 column on the WordPress 6.5 Editor Tasks board.

[colorful-tones]

Hi folks, We are only one week away from the Beta 1 cut-off date for WordPress 6.6. This issue hasn’t seen any movement in a while, so we (the editor triage leads of the 6.6 release) have decided to remove it from the WordPress 6.6 Editor Tasks project board.

[youknowriad]

I'm exploring this idea. I'm starting with a small refactor that will unblock this. #63148