Usability issues in version switching on our documentation #40
Description
As reported in the following issue [1], the concerns are as follows:
- Expected behaviour: We select a page in the latest doc version and then if we want to go to the same page in a previous version, it should be possible to just change the version from the version picker and go to the relevant doc.
Users are always diverted to the home page even if there is no change to the file path here. Works the same for APIM as well.
- Expected behaviour: We select a page in the latest doc version and then if we want to go to the same page in a previous version, it should be possible to change the version in the URL and go to the relevant doc. Won't work if the file name or file path is different in the second version of course.
Possible solutions
"We should be looking at the intended destination of the URL on the 404 page and provide the users with valid alternatives. This can be achieved with a few different options, but a simple immediate fix would be to pull the relevant text from the URL and fill out the search box with it. more than likely the correct article will be found. Separately if we add more navigation options away from the 404 page it will improve the UX. something more like "hey we didn't find that but maybe you are looking for X" where X could be the most common pages or a similar set of links from the homepage."
However, we seem to have a more pressing problem in WSO2 IS. This is what the 404 page looks like in IS and APIM respectively. In IS 6.0.0, the Search doesn't work in this view, so the user is really blocked. IMO, the way it works in APIM is a good enough solution. We can easily edit the text to guide users to use the Search to find the content (even if the issue [1] is not fixed).
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In IS
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In APIM
