"Currently working as" on every "work as" page

[azurelunatic]

Title:
"Currently working as" on every "work as" page

Area:
community administration, ui, making things make sense

Summary:
Show a "currently working as: [community or user]" on every page that allows you to manage multiple journals. This would likely be a series of quick fixes or perhaps suitable for some beginning developers, although it might be replaced down the line if the current settings pages are overhauled.

Description:
Currently, when you load a page like http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/tags you get a list of communities you can manage (if you administrate any) as well as your own journal, but you have to remember to click the "Switch" button to make it happen. I have more than once made changes for the wrong place and then been frustrated because I forgot to click that button (and I would consider myself a power user).

Also, if you're done working with your community and you want to go back there to see how it looks, sometimes there isn't a quick link.

Adding a "currently working as" notice would serve as a notice that maybe you need to click the button, a reassurance that you really are working on the right community, and a link to go back and check things out. It would probably save a lot of time and just look nicer.

Poll #8423 "Currently working as" on every "work as" page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 64

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
55 (85.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (1.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (10.9%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (1.6%)

Comments

[boundbooks]

I clicked 'Other', because I have no idea what the technical thingies are, but YES. A thousand times yes to some way of either making it obvious what account you're working as, or some kind of cookie/sticky thing that keeps you as that account until you switch it.

I have many, many sad happenings of ripping out layout code/making color changes for my own journal when I really meant to be doing it in one of my communities.

[azurelunatic]

I've been getting more of a feel for how these things work by studying the developers' discussions and the code in the code tours, and the technical thingy is probably:

1) Make sure that there is a thingy that can retrieve the name of the journal currently being worked on (which there sort of has to be, in order to do other stuff on that page, but I'm not sure quite how easy it is to use).

2) Write a few lines of code to display the username in question.

3) Figure out how to put it on the page so it looks nice, and figure out how to phrase it.

4) Create the corresponding stuff for the translation system.

5) Review and test it a few times to make sure nothing's been left out or gone wrong.


I'm guessing that it would be a good little project for a beginning developer, because it's mostly showing something that's already known but just not shown.

[boundbooks]

It would be very cool to have it be done! :D

[arethinn]

My "with changes" is rather qualified, since I don't have enough need/experience administrating communities on DW and therefore don't know from experience where the code might already differ, so this may be meaningless or unnecessary. But on LJ I've sometimes been tripped up by being switched unawares/without confirmation from personal to community administration when I moved between various customization parts. I'd like it if that were not the case.