Question about inline-edit styling

[Daphne Ogle]

I'm going to think aloud a bit hear in the hopes of hearing others  
perspective.

The current design describes these 2 actions as having the same visual  
representation.  The point of the highlight is to help users discover  
the functionality.  The worst case would be to have a user staring at  
a screen trying to find the edit link.

For keyboard interaction, tabbing into the field is when we want the  
user to know they can edit the information in the field.  Since the  
field has focus I assume it will display as an editable field at that  
point?  Perhaps that's enough of an indicator of the ability to edit.   
With keyboard interaction what we are missing is the ability to  
accidentally discover the inline edit option.  I don't think there is  
a  parallel in keyboard interaction to mouse users randomly moving the  
mouse around on the screen?  Or perhaps it's just beginning to "tab  
around"?  If editable fields are all changing their display editable  
then users will get that it's an option.

Thoughts?

-Daphne

On Jul 10, 2008, at 1:53 PM, Anastasia Cheetham wrote:

>
> Hi, Daphne and Allison,
>
> Justin has opened an issue against the Inline edit:
> http://issues.fluidproject.org/browse/FLUID-891
>
> Would one of you be able to have a look at it, and clarify what the  
> styling of an inline edit should be for keyboard interaction? In our  
> implementation, we made a distinction between hovering (i.e. with  
> the mouse) and actually focusing (i.e. by tabbing to the component)  
> so that the two actions produce different visual effects. Should  
> they be the same?
>
> -- 
> Anastasia Cheetham                   a.cheetham at utoronto.ca
> Software Designer, Fluid Project    http://fluidproject.org
> Adaptive Technology Resource Centre / University of Toronto
>

Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
daphne at media.berkeley.edu
cell (510)847-0308