Windows Live Taskforce

Standardize the comment editors across WL.

Submitted by gregsedwards on March 13, 2009 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Usability

Problem: There's a lot of variation between the comment editors used in Windows Live (profile notes, PMs, web-based blog editor, blog comments, guestbook, group discussions, feedback, etc.), and I'm not just talking about the exclusion of rich-formatting controls in some of them.
I realize that different contexts require different classes of formatting tools (e.g., you might not want contributors to create wild formatting in your blog comments), but all comment editors should at a bare minimum provide tools to add rich links. The feedback editors, for instance, don't even wrap text properly; your text often wraps in the middle of a word, which just looks cheap.
Inserting images without a toolbar button can be done via HTML mode, but it's a time-consuming challenge to say the least.
In addition, the back-end HTML that some of the comment editors create (those that provide an HTML view) is wildly inconsistent. Some create "paragraphs" using <DIV> elements, while others seem to create true <P> elements. Unless you're willing to dive into HTML view and tweak it, the spacing gets all wonky. <BLOCKQUOTE> element spacing almost never looks right unless you add a <BR> before the following <P>. Maybe its a problem with the underlying stylesheets.

Solution: Create a uniform set of editing/formatting tools for all comment editors. I've got no problem with turning on/off features depending on their context (that makes a lot of sense), but maybe add more granularity, so that some tools can be disabled without losing all of them. And clean up/standardize the HTML that's created on the back-end.

Severity: Medium

Impact: High

Status: Not fixed