Copywriting 101, or does you wife (hubby, mother, granny) understand?

russlipton

@remouk - ""Permalink" tooltip = "Don't worry about this unless you already know what it is in which case you won't need a tooltip anyway. Comment permalinks are useful but totally impossible to explain in less than 200 words so we will now delete this tooltip and return you to your regularly scheduled program. Thanks, HAL."

Okay. Yours is better. Unfortunately, non-tech folk will have no idea where to find or use that permanent link. Though very verbose, perhaps ... "Permanent link to this comment is displayed in browser location bar for copy-paste to share with others as 'http:// ... #item_x'"

The problem is that one either has to instruct or leave blank. If putting a couple of nasty ALT lines helps reduce support emails for this feature by 50%, well, that's cool, no?

TomTester

How about "permalink" -> link directly to this comment (if we have a big bubble we can add the whole copy/paste thing) Re: big/small input I like what typepad does. They show an icon *at the bottom* (for people who run out of space?) and next to it it simply says "bigger" Granny loved it ;-) (though size never matters, or so claims my wife)

russlipton

@TomTester ... it's only good if a non-tech person can decipher it:

Link what directly to this comment?

If you didn't already know to look for something in the browser location bar, why wouldn't you think that clicking the 'permalink' link did, precisely, nothing ... that it was a bug ... or just another example of bad software design? The feedback for clicking is zero.

.... "maybe if I keep clicking that damn permalink link something will happen .... nurse!" ....

TomTester

So true. OK, so lets add a pop-up: "stop left-clicking me already, you technical illiterate! right-click or drag-drop, that's all I'm in for" (unless you're a mac user, then click me once, sloooow and tenderly)

russlipton

PUUURFECT! Now we're talking UI design ;-)

Dinoboff

Permalink = " Link to this comment"

... Like the Link to this page on google map ?

remouk

You can't display an image in a title/alt tag.

Dinoboff

I don't want it in a alt, title or tooltip. I want it instead of the permalink link:

Link to this comment

russlipton

@Dinoboff - I'm still wondering what any of this would mean to someone who didn't already know (and if you know, the current link text is concisely perfect). Granted, I click whatever-is-the-prompt-for-the-link and the page resets with the permalinked post at the top - that is the user feedback. But if I were an ordinary brilliant doctor, physicist or plumber, this would tell me nothing about what has happened or what to do next.

I'm thinking that a single-page glossary of Vanilla terms might be more helpful for this kind of case - and some others. Not instead of UI tweaking to refine Vanilla, but in parallel. Then, permalinks could be explained without intruding into the normal user experience - also things like whispers, HTML, roles et al.

I'll try to work something up by Monday. It's about time I contributed something minimally useful.

TomTester

I've been making changes to the language in the site I'm developing.
Still not happy with it, but plan to finalize this weekend and I'll show
it for comments.

I've discovered some plugins re-use pre-defined text titles (e.g. 'options')
but apply it in a different context which makes it nearly impossible to
change the to anything but the original word (without editing the actual
plugin code).

Example: ['options'] is used to indicate features in the category listing,
but also as a header in the admin section, etc. etc.

russlipton

Here is another nitty but useful edit-change. The word 'Topics' in search should be changed to 'Discussions' or, better, 'Discussion Titles'. The word 'topics' has no context within Vanilla to make it comprehensible to end-users.

Core feature suggestion: add search by (discussions within) 'Categories'

russlipton

I have finished a first draft for 26 common terms within Vanilla - want to scrub it and make it more precise before sharing for further help. I am aiming for this evening or tomorrow; I'll post something tomorrow no matter what.

Here are the terms defined so far. Please suggest others, whether or not I get to them today:

Account
Add-on's
Administrator
Block Comment
Block User
Category
Closed Discussions
Comments
Core Version
Discussion
Extensions
Forum
Guests
HTML
Members
Permalink
Registered Users
Roles
Search
Sign In/Sign Out
Sink Discussions
Sticky Discussions
Styles
Themes
User Profile
Whispers

con

what did others think of the copyblogger webste listed above ? it is food for thought...