When a user goes to change a preference, they are usually in one of the following states:
- On a page that the preference would affect, and they wish to change the preference and have the change be effective asap.
- About to go to a page, and know they need to change a preference in order that it is rendered the way they want.
An example of both of those scenarios is bug 52355, where a user wants to enable the VisualEditor on the current page, or enable it on the next page they visit (especially if it is a redlink).
Currently the typical workflow is
0. The user on a mediawiki page
- Load special:preferences
- Change the preference and Save (which loads preferences panel again)
- Press 'Back' button twice
- Reload or click a link
Desired workflow:
- Open a pref panel in the current page
- Change the pref and close the panel
- The changes become effective immediately, if that can be achieved without reloading the page and/or loosing any user data, or a small notice displayed near the preferences panel button to inform the users their changes will be effective by reloading.
Version: 1.22.0
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52355