Revision History: Display "Revision History" item when there has been at least one set of saved revisions

[kathrynwp]

What problem does this address?

After saving one set of style revisions, it's not yet clear that there's a revision history available.

Details:

1. Go to Appearance > Editor
2. Click into the preview area on the right
3. Click the Styles icon near the top right

Note the default state of the Revisions icon, it's greyed out:

4. Make a change in the Styles area (under Typography, Colors, or Layout) and click Save

Note that the Revisions icon is now active (black). Clicking the icon now displays "Reset to defaults":

However, this can be confusing. When I first saw it, I wondered where the new Revisions side panel was, and why it wasn't working.

Once I made and saved another revision, however, I saw that the number "2" appeared in a black square next to a new item "Revision history" – and I then understood that the "Revision history" item would only appear once at least two sets of changes have been saved:

What is your proposed solution?

I think it would be much clearer, consistent, and less confusing to display the "Revision history" item even when there's only been only one saved revision. That will remove any doubt in a user's mind that the revision history panel maybe isn't working.

[ramonjd]

👋🏻

Thanks for filing this issue. It raises a question we grappled with initially, when introducing the revisions feature.

It was a deliberate choice to only show the revisions after two changes. See #50089 (comment)

It's because the initial global style custom post isn't considered a "revision" . So if we reduce the condition to const hasRevisions = revisionsCount >= 1;, there's nothing with which we can compare it

If we reveal the panel with one revision, it would show it fine but we can't interact with it:

An alternative, and I've already tested this, is to show the "reset to default" version as the first revision.

I've thrown up a PR to demonstrate:

#52965

cc @jameskoster with whom we originally chatted about this idea 🙇🏻

[kathrynwp]

Thanks for the context, @ramonjd .

If we reveal the panel with one revision, it would show it fine but we can't interact with it:

What if clicking that initial revision just did the same thing as "reset to defaults"? That would be quite consistent and less confusing, in my opinion. But maybe there's a technical reason preventing that?

[ramonjd]

What if clicking that initial revision just did the same thing as "reset to defaults"? That would be quite consistent and less confusing, in my opinion. But maybe there's a technical reason preventing that?

Do you mean the initial revision with the first changes, or the "defaults" revision we're adding in #52965?

If the latter, then that's the road we're going down. I think that's consistent.

If the former, I'm not sure that I'd expect to reset styles by clicking on a revision that contains changes different to the theme base 🤔

[kathrynwp]

@ramonjd Oh yes, I see what you're saying. I think a "Reset to defaults" item as shown in #52965 would definitely serve to avoid the confusion I ran into!

[ramonjd]

Resolved by #52965