NOTE: This suggestion is for Confluence Server. Using Confluence Cloud? See the corresponding suggestion.
User story
A user inserts a numbered bullet list, types in one item, then presses ENTER.
The RTE at this point produces:
1. first point 2. CURSOR HERE
What they want is to continue adding text and content after the first bullet. They aren't ready for the second yet.
In wiki markup they would just:
# first point keep typing more stuff here which would be part of the first point
The solution of course is SHIFT + ENTER. However, a majority of users aren't aware of this. One example.
We could adopt the stance that we need to train / educate users. But I think there's a still better way, and MS Word has implemented it, and I think its brilliant.
Suggestion
When the RTE shows:
1. first 2. CURSOR IS BLINKING HERE - second 3. third
If the user hits backspace, they get:
1. first CURSOR IS BLINKING HERE - second 2. third
Note:
- numbering has been restored (so (3) becomes (2))
- the contents of second bullet has been moved to the first.
- the user doesn't have to know about SHIFT + ENTER. Backspace is what I've seen a few people doing intuitively to remove the bullet style. Lets give them that instead.
Technically the DOM should be:
<ol>
<li>first<br/>second</li>
<li>third</li>
</ol>
- relates to
-
CONFCLOUD-23899 Backspacing a bullet item should remove the bullet style only
- Closed
[CONFSERVER-23899] Backspacing a bullet item should remove the bullet style only
This is likely a more favorable interaction than the current behaviour.
Things that will get in the way of a complete and robust implementation:
- There's a few significant, non-trivial scenarios in which the behaviour needs to be accounted for:
- If cursor is in first or last list item.
- where are there nested lists relative to the current list item.
- what happens when the user indents or outdents on a line that has been collapsed in the described way?
- what happens when the user attempts to re-add a bullet to a collapsed line by either:
- pressing the list item buttons on the toolbar, or
- hitting undo?
Implementation concerns:
- There are several permutations of markup that need to be considered and tested for. I will compile a list of these.
- This is not browser-default behaviour. To implement this, it mandates manually controlling each browser's behaviour to conform with our expected behaviour.
- We need to implement it such that our code + tinyMCE + browsers interop well, while preventing regressions in functionality.
I estimate doing this properly is a decent size of work.
Found 1 issue
CONF-24167but do not think this should block this fix going out.