Language tool tips

In the left sidebar, I noticed that the tooltips for the language codes don’t actually tip off what the abbreviation stands for. It just gives the name of the text (which is already present to the right of the language code)
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Surely this must go against some design principle.

Having introduced the site to many people, I can say that the language codes make an already difficult situation even more confusing. Could the tool tip say something like “Original Language: Pali”. Even using the term “Root Text” is not clear to newcomers.

(Under Vinaya and Abhidhamma, none of the language codes have tool tips, btw)

If this has been noted somewhere else, please feel free to delete this post.

8 Likes

Good point, I will make an issue for it.

5 Likes

Thanks!

Sitting in the danasala I had the worry that I had already requested this before. Old age. To be avoided.

OK, now that I play with it some more, it appears that the language icon is just part of the whole line and the tool tip is actually for the whole line. I didn’t notice that.

So the tool tips don’t have any counterpart in mobile touch screens, do they? Just remembering that over 60% of users are mobile.

I know that the sidebar is super complicated. Could the language icon actually be clickable so that a popup was triggered with the tool tip? I realize this may be just too complicated to implement. But it would help in mobile. Don’t know how many people would think to click it though.

3 Likes

Yes, it’s a difficult area of UI. Too much info, it all gets complicated, too little it is obscure. I’d also really, really like to add translated titles to the sidebar!

Perhaps what we could do is make an additional, “expanded” ToC, taking the structure of the sidebar and putting it on a whole page. Then we could add translated titles and so on. The sidebar could remain as-is, as a more abbreviated form for people already familiar. Hmm, not sure.

Another option would be to make an “information-dense” sidebar as an option.

Performance is an issue, though. With so much data already in the sidebar, the animations are poor on mobiles. I want to fix this, but getting smooth animations on mobile is still not as easy as it should be.