Contact Info Block: Address Block: "Link to Google Maps" setting not noticeable

[thehenrybyrd]

When Contact Info Block was introduced, 2 of 3 beta testers completely missed the option to "Link address to Google Maps" for the Address Block. p5T066-2bn-p2#comment-8064 We might consider making this more obvious in some way.

To Reproduce

1. Create a Contact Info Block
2. Note that no settings "gear" icon is visible
3. Select the Address Block
4. Note that the settings "gear" icon is hidden beneath the keyboard
5. Scroll to find the settings icon and tap it to find the "Link to Google Maps" setting

Screenshots

Smartphone (please complete the following information): Samsung Galaxy S21, Android 11, WPAndroid 17.2-rc-2 iPhone SE, iOS 14.4.2, WPiOS 17.2

[mchowning]

Any thoughts on this @illusaen or @iamthomasbishop ?

[illusaen]

Any thoughts on this @illusaen or @iamthomasbishop ?

Oh, hmmm. Unfortunately the normal behaviour is to put it down on the bottom of the block. What do you think about maybe removing the phone inner block that comes in by default @iamthomasbishop ?

[iamthomasbishop]

Any thoughts on this @illusaen or @iamthomasbishop ?

There are a couple of things at play here; one is wider and solvable issue, and the other is a deciding on what level of priority the control should get in the context of "WYSIWYG".

• Location of the "Link to" setting: There was a design decision to put the "Link to Google Maps" control inside block settings, for two reasons:
  1. In the spirit of "WYSIWYG", it's preferred to not show elements in the block itself that aren't going to be displayed on the canvas. The tradeoff is then that it gets de-emphasized (relative to the web version of the block). At the time, I leaned towards taking that trade-off.
  2. With that in mind, the next obvious place seemed to be block settings, because when looking for additional functionality for a block, folks seem to be able to find the settings — big caveat — assuming the settings icon is visible when they've got the block selected (which brings me to the next point...)
• Block settings icon: This is a wider issue that involves the Inline Toolbar and affects all "tall" blocks; we'll need to find a way to ensure the inline toolbar stays visible instead of being pushed out of the viewport. We have a few ideas for how to solve this, but it will take a proper design project.

I know that's not immediately helpful for this specific issue, but attacking the issue at the Inline Toolbar level would be my preferred solution because it would help close the gap (at least in terms of accessing the control in block settings) while also having wide-ranging benefits across the editor.

The "easy" route here would be to place that setting on the canvas, and while I hesitate to do that, maybe it's a bit "purist". If we're considering adding the control to the canvas, I wouldn't mind taking a look at some usage data to see whether or not it is highly used and/or valuable.

One more thought: I believe in some cases web browsers (or maybe it's on the OS-level?) will automatically wrap addresses in a link — if that's common enough, maybe it's okay that this setting gets lesser priority.

[thehenrybyrd]

I know that's not immediately helpful for this specific issue, but attacking the issue at the Inline Toolbar level would be my preferred solution because it would help close the gap (at least in terms of accessing the control in block settings) while also having wide-ranging benefits across the editor.

I would agree with this direction for a couple reasons:

1. Though longer-term solutions take more time, the benefits are more wide-spread as you mention. Since this is a wider issue, I'd lean towards solving the wider issue over making various small fixes for individual blocks it effects.
2. If folks know or expect they'll be able to link the address, they will look harder for the settings.

[iamthomasbishop]

Cool, thanks @thehenrybyrd! I'll add this as a task to the design team project board. Thank you!