Some time back I have introduced the tooltip which appears on top of a link to an article which allows you to give a taste of the article hidden behind the link, that was a great update but in many cases made people jump from one article to the other and getting lost, not in a good way into your lore.
The information on this blog post might be outdated! Check the documentation for the most up-to-date information about this feature.
A new way to explore!
I am so very happy to announce that now the readers of Master+ Guild Members will be able to read almost the whole of your article without leaving the page they were reading.
It’s my hope that this will make for a much smoother experience for your readers and that will enhance their ability to navigate and get to know your world.
Enabling/Disabling the Feature
There has been some discussions in regards to if the feature should be optional or not and if it is optional if that should be on World Level or Article level.
I would very much like to hear your opinion on that since it will help me formulate a solution that will get everyone to be happy.
Currently the options I am thinking of are:
- Allow a World Owner to disable the feature for their world from the World Settings
- Allow the author to choose what the reaction will be when the article link is when some one puts the mouse over it. The options will be:
- Show the article in the new system (cover, title, vignette)
- Show just the excerpt if one is available.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Please comment below!
In the cover: Battle of the Tulip Fields by Dhelian
I could see some people arguing that disabling/enabling it per article could be nice.
For me personally, an enable/disable option for the whole world would be enough, as well as being able to choose what happens. So basically the two options you already mentioned.
While I LOVE this system, I believe the option to turn them off wouldn’t be a bad thing. Or better yet, the option to turn off the article preview for certain articles. I would personally use this to turn off articles that have containers near the top. If containers were enabled for the article preview, I would use them for every article.
My take on it is that it’s great but, since I write some of my articles entirely in the vignette, I’d like to have the option to use this feature OR the except, based on like a box i click or don’t click.
It’s a great feature! What about a setting to show only a certain number of sentences from the vignette? Some people (like me) usually write the full article in the vignette to have more control over formatting and structure, which means that the pop-up displays the whole article.
I think that allowing the world owner enabling/disabling the feature for their world is a good idea.
I would prefer if it was optional and if there was an option to disable it. I find the excerpt tooltip more helpful for quickly giving readers an idea of what the article is about.
The feature is neat, but I’d like to disable it, personally. I think your proposed solution is a good one and as far as I can imagine solves all of my use-cases.
While I love the idea of seeing the cover, title and vignette, a lot of people do their entire article in there instead of filling out things. This could cause heavy bloating in articles with a lot of references. I usually link things for the well, link, as well as the excerpt to allow people to quickly get a look at what the topic is supposed to be.
A small rectangular version of the cover, and just the excerpt would be a happy medium I think. I love the feature, but since it would get rid of excerpts I would have to disable it ):
So you know, you can put content in the footnotes section instead and it will treat it like a 2nd vignette right under the first, and will respect the sidebar. 🙂
I think this feature is amazing, I really do. Also, I thought as a search tool for us as creators (the Explore function) being able to see the whole article was a perfect addition to our toolbox, but I’m torn here on several levels.
First off, having the option to use or not use the feature is something I think should be included, because I prefer the tooltip function as a creator, not the full-blown reveal and it’s for three specific reasons after reading these replies:
1) Your suggestion, Ademal, though SEEMS good (remember, I’m a newbie here–so please don’t shoot me if I’m missing something), you’re asking us to create our articles in an ‘unnatural’ way to conform to a tool (the footnote suggestion), rather than the tool conforming to our writing, which feels backwards;
2) We build our articles and format them to continue to weave an overall experience for our readers. At least I do. And that means artwork, the containers, the scrolls you helped me design and build, and who knows what will be developed by out brilliant leader in the future… I personally want readers to explore and literally ‘get lost’ in my world–and love the fact that they do.
I don’t think you can experience that looking through this tool, nor experience the full creation of a page this way. This is why I prefer the original tooltip, just the words, where I can give them just enough information to say, “Hmmmm, I gotta check that out next!”
One fix to this, of course, would be to–as it has been suggested–limit the lines or maybe characters displayed. For me, I write most of my articles in the vignette, just like CTK commented, so unless I can control how much information is displayed, so I can encourage them to actually show up on the page itself, I wouldn’t use it as is.
3) Unless I’ve missed something here, the popup has completely different fonts, and looks completely different form the page it’s trying to sell the reader on.
That defeats the purpose, IMHO, of formatting my pages in the first place. Visually I think this function will take away from what i’m trying to do, whereas the current tooltip whispers, “Imagine what you’ll find HERE….”
I’m not knocking anything here. The feature is brilliant.
I just don’t want to be forced to use it when it will detract from what I’m trying to do with my own world right now.
If the feature can’t be modified to mirror the actual pages it’s displaying AND limit the information BEING displayed, I’d appreciate an option to turn it off.
I love this idea and will definitely use it! While not necessary, would people be able to add articles to their reading list from the previews?
Reviewing everyone’s feedback, I think the addition of a BBCode Excerpt Box might be worthwhile for previews on the site, and have the hover over default to: BBCode Excerpt > Current Vignette Preview
I think that any functionality which gets rid of the current excerpt format is unfriendly to Twitter and Discord, as that excerpt is what appears when you link the article into other websites and is extremely useful as an eye catcher.
Having the current vignette preview is awesome, but I understand the concern some have for it, especially since I’ve found that it doesn’t parse containers at all. I think that rather than it parsing containers, being able to put your own bbcode Content in it, whether you choose to make it just raw text or an image and some text or whatever, allows people to have both the new and old functionality.
I’m aware this is asking for a new feature whereas the current method leverages existing features, but I also believe it’s the strongest longterm solution.
It is a very interesting feature to get a hint about the linked content without needing to fully open it. Love it!
About options you talked about.
-A general “world disabled” is interesting for people not enjoying that option at all, while keeping it easily active for others. So totally for it (even if won t turn it off myself 😛 )
-To choose what to have enabled/disabled for it is nice for custom designing your world. I would see it either as a select ( showcoverthing/excerpt/never) .
What I am unsure is if it is more interesting to have that decision on the active article, or the linked content.
Having some article “types” we prefer without preview could be interesting. Or only on a specific case where I want the sidebar list to be either a quick preview, or a dull link list. (same for over text links)
As always, choice is the best option, but that mean more work on your side, evil 😛
Sidenote: On articles with custom header picture, there is sometimes two bugs so far.
– Background do not load (transparent under text, instead of the white BG to read more easily
– position of the tooltip is centered on mouse on same occasion as first bug (where on non bugged ones, the tooltip is above the link/mouse.
I vote for the setting in the world settings, you can also add the setting of if you want it to show cover, title, vignette at the world level as well. But having it at that level makes more sense for a cohesive looking site. Hitting every article is too tedious.
I love the idea, but shouldn’t the decision on how to view the popup vignette article be more up to the reader than to the author? A set of ‘increase, decrease, hide’ toggles from the viewer would be great. As an author, I’d want the popups to be responsive, rather than hard-coded. On a little mobile device, be small and unobtrusive – too often the popup obscures the entire thing on a mobile screen. on a big expansive display, show it all and then some. But that’s reader and device driven, not author driven.
I was looking for an answer like that ! I too think it should be a decision made by the reader rather than the writter.
I didn’t think about the impact on mobile users, but it’s a very good point !
Maybe there’s a compromise to find here ? Like a flag set by the author to tell the reader whether they optimised navigation for the use of vignette or not. Readers who have it disabled would be advised to use it to experience the world the way the author intended to if the flag is up, and if the flag is down and the reader uses the vignettes, a warning would tell them that the vignettes might not be properly formatted and are not recommended to use ?
In any case, it’s a cool feature, I can’t wait to see how it’s gonna be used !
I think having a setting, or toggle, for showing “excerpts or article preview” would be great. I don’t mind if it’s a per-world setting, or per article. Maybe if it was per article, it could just be a toggle near the excerpt box when editing an article, where you can choose whether the article shows it’s excerpt or is previewed when linked?