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Issue 675387 link

Starred by 4 users

Issue metadata

Status: WontFix
Owner: ----
Closed: May 2018
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: ----
Pri: 3
Type: Bug



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MD Settings: Advanced section not discoverable

Project Member Reported by michae...@chromium.org, Dec 17 2016

Issue description

This is opinion-based, but: I think the Advanced section has discoverability problems. I know it's been discussed and decided in the past but I couldn't find a bug for it.

On the main page:

* The "Advanced ▼" button is the least visible control on the page. Most buttons are dark-grey-on-white or dark-blue-on-white and are bold face and ALL CAPS. Other hit targets like rows are dark-grey-on-white. The button is also very narrow; other controls are shown on 640-px wide canvases. [basic-bottom.png]

* I know that the downward triangle (▼) next to the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the page is supposed to mean there's expandable content, but that's not a familiar context. I don't think the triangle ▼ makes plain text automatically recognizable as an expand button. Yes, it's the same triangle for <select>s, but those look very different; it's also the same triangle as the scrollbar down button on Windows.

* We show "overscroll" so that when you navigate to a section, e.g. sidebar => "Default browser", the section appears at the top of the page. All thish empty space under "Advanced ▼" gives the impression that the Advanced section is just *blank* (not hidden). I've literally fallen for this and tried to debug it. [defaultBrowser.png]

In the sidebar:

* We removed the "Basic" header; now the Basic sections are listed at the top level, so it's not clear that Advanced would have sub-items. I think it's easy to mistake "Advanced" for a header for "About Chrome" -- which is reasonable; isn't About normally an advanced feature of any program? We could solve this by simply always showing the entire section list in the sidebar. [sidebar.png, sidebar-expanded.png]

* When we last decided in May to keep the sidebar default-hidden, one argument *against* this decision was that the max-width of the cards, at 960px, meant we'd have to much white space. Now that the max-width of the cards has been cut 33%, down to 640px, that argument should be weighted more strongly. Also compare with MD History, which allows a much wider main section but has a fixed side nav.

See also issue 644535 for large windows.

To compare with Options: the Options Advanced button:

* is blue and has a hover state (looks and acts like a clickable link)
* has a clear call to action: "Show advanced settings..."
* is clearly hiding something: separator above, "..." in label
 
basic-bottom.png
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defaultBrowser.png
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sidebar.png
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sidebar-expanded.png
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Maybe we should remove the whole concept of Advanced... - always show the Advanced content and lazy-load all the sections on the main page.

Comment 2 by dbeam@chromium.org, Jan 3 2017

Blocking: 671375
Labels: -Pri-2 Pri-1
Labels: -Pri-1 Pri-3
Owner: michae...@chromium.org
Status: Assigned (was: Untriaged)
The whole notion of Advanced is that a user shouldn't need to change anything there. It's for settings that are either (1) potentially dangerous or (2) very rarely used but still necessary to offer. Given that, I don't consider this a launch blocker (marking as Pri-3).

@michaelpg, what is your primary concern with "Advanced" being less discoverable?
* Settings that many users understand/need are in Advanced
* Power users looking to tweak an advanced setting might not find it
* Something else?

As for the sidenav, I'm still a fan of making it default-open but I don't think that's related to this issue. It's tracked in Issue 628247 and Issue 644535
Blocking: -671375
Also removing from beta-blocker list

Comment 5 by tbuckley@google.com, Jan 25 2017

Labels: Hotlist-MD-Settings-Structure
Owner: ----
Status: Untriaged (was: Assigned)
#3: If the goal is to prevent users from stumbling upon these settings, then discoverability isn't a problem.

Comment 7 by dbeam@chromium.org, Feb 14 2017

Status: Available (was: Untriaged)
Project Member

Comment 8 by sheriffbot@chromium.org, Feb 16 2018

Labels: Hotlist-Recharge-Cold
Status: Untriaged (was: Available)
This issue has been Available for over a year. If it's no longer important or seems unlikely to be fixed, please consider closing it out. If it is important, please re-triage the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience if the bug really should have been left as Available. If you change it back, also remove the "Hotlist-Recharge-Cold" label.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot
Status: WontFix (was: Untriaged)
I am marking this as WontFix per comment #3 and #6. It seems that we have settled on current Basic/Advanced separation.

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