Topic on Talk:Page Previews/Flow

I've already posted some of my comments in a previous thread "Hovercard hover placement issue", but got no answer, so I'm posting them again and also adding more problem reports. The idea behind this is good, the display is nice but it needs some modification to stop getting in the way of normal use of the encyclopedia.

First, hovercards shouldn't be displayed so quickly, to ensure that they are displayed because the reader wants them to, not juste because the mouse went over a link. I still have Navigation popups active (because it allows me to do more things, like fixing links to disambiguation pages) and I think that having a similar delay would be a lot better.

Other problems I have encountered are with clicking (I almost only use Ctrl+Click, so I don't know if the problems I saw happen also with simple Click) :

1) (already reported) Very often when I put my cursor over a link, I have to Ctrl+Click several times to have the link opening in an other tab in Chrome. Simply clicking where the mouse is doesn't work every time. Often, if I Ctrl+Click when the hovercard is poping up, the Ctrl+Click is lost, and the hovercard disappears and starts poping up again. Painful to use, I'm currently considering deactivating this feature.

2) (already reported) I've also seen an other situation, less frequent: sometimes, when the hovercard is completely displayed, Ctrl+Click doesn't work at all unless you move the cursor a bit. If you repeatedly do Ctrl+Click without moving the cursor, the only thing that happens is that text is selected in the hovercard: first word, then all text, then nothing, ...

3) (new report) I'm currently working on fixing ISBN errors, I'm using a page that lists all ISBN errors on frwiki [1]. I often take one line, and Ctrl+Click on all the links in that line to open the articles each in a new tab. Sometimes, when I move to a new link, the hovercard from the previous link is still displayed, and sometimes, even if I have the impression of clicking on the new link, it's the previous link that gets opened one more time instead of the new link.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Correction_syntaxique/ISBN_invalides

And also:

4) (new report) after Ctrl+Click, I move the cursor (the hovercard disappears), I go to the new tab, make my modification, and then close it. Then, Chrome displays again the previous page on which I did the Ctrl+Click : the hovercard reappears even if the cursor is nowhere near the link.

NicoV: the flickering-bug patch is now live and tested. The core problem is fixed on all wikis. Thanks again for your patience.

Regarding the other issues (incl. timing, wrong-link opening, hovercard-reappearing when not near link), I'll [file or poke] bugs and developers. Thanks for all the details, tis appreciated.

Quiddity (WMF): thanks for the heads up. It's a lot better now, including wrong link opening. The hovercard reappearing is still there. I also noticed that if you go to an other tab and come back to the original tab, the hovercard also reappears, and you can do it continuously (go to an other tab, come back => hovercard appears, move the mouse to it to make it disappear, start again from the beginning)

NicoV: In case you wish to follow the bugs, see bugzilla:66221 (flicker on click), bugzilla:66240 (flicker edge-case), bugzilla:64234 (timing. Increasing the default will probably solve your issue with trying to rapidly ctrl-click many items in a vertical list. Also, there might eventually be a "disable Hovercards" option built-in, as Reference Tooltips has.), bugzilla:66261 (ctrl-click then reappear), bugzilla:66262 (triangle and border area not clickable). I think that covers them all. Let me know if I missed anything.