Tile expand and collapse is confusing - Githubissues

wordplaydev / wordplay

An accessible, language-inclusive programming language and IDE for creating interactive typography on the web.

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Tile expand and collapse is confusing #423

Closed amyjko closed 3 months ago

amyjko commented 3 months ago

Expected behavior

Students should be able to expand and collapse tiles to configure Wordplay on small laptop screens.

Actual behavior

This functionality works as intended, but students could not infer it. There are many likely causes:

The buttons at the bottom do not look like toggles
The minimize button is hidden on small screens because its on the far right of the toolbar
When tiles are collapsed, the icon pointing down doesn't really explain that all tiles are collapsed

The result is that many students didn't know how to redisplay the stage or editor after collapsing it.

Environment

Small, low resolution 13" PC laptop screens.

Design specification

I think the following design changes would help:

[x] Move the full screen and collapse buttons to the start of the toolbar, so they are next to the tile name and always visible
[ ] When the source is expanded, don't show it in the toolbar, creating a kind of spatial permanence (each tile only has one representation on screen)
[ ] Redesign the show tile buttons to look more like minimized windows
[ ] Replace the arrow down when all tiles are collapsed to explain how tiles work