Hi Mimi:
Does this describe what you mean:
Whenever an "Out of the Box" collection is selected, the summary
displays only that collection, no matter which other collections are
checked.
If so, then what about when you have multiple "Out of the Box"
collections selected? Does the summary view display the last selected
collection?
As an alternative to graying out the checked collections when an "Out of
the Box" collection is selected, how about unchecking them (unselecting
"Out of the Box" collections would restore the previous checked state).
Another possibility I've been thinking about is having two separate
tables in the sidebar, one for the "Out of the Box" collections and one
for the user collections. This makes it really easy to put a divider
line between them (other options have a host of messy complications). At
first I thought two tables would be difficult because they each have a
separate selection. However two separate selections might be just what
you want: When the "Out of the Box" table has the focus the "User
collection" table selection is drawn lighter. Whichever table has the
focus displays it's selected (and checked in the case of the "User
collections") collections in the summary view.
It also makes it easier to deal with reordering collections in the
tables if and when we allow that -- you're limited to reordering
collections within each table but you can't move collections between tables.
John
Mimi Yin wrote:
Hi John,
These are good questions and I'm sure you're not the only one that has
/ will have them...Can I move this discussion to the design list?
CC:ing Sheila since she owns these specs. :O)
Back in May and June, we had a whole series of threads on the design
list. Not sure how up you were on the issues at the time or if it was
too complicated to follow... Here is the best summary of all of the
issues:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-June/004818.html
Here are the original threads:
+ What is the purpose of the All collection:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-May/004734.html
+ Sidebar Virtuality:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-May/004754.html
We should probably get into a room with a whiteboard and Jeffrey,
because he has a pretty good handle on these issues.
On Aug 1, 2006, at 4:44 PM, John Anderson wrote:
Hi Mimi:
I was reading the sidebar spec and had trouble understanding this:
Implement a temporarily de-activated, but still checked state for
checked collections when users select an OOTB collection while they
have user-defined collections overlayed.
It might help if you could explain what you mean by "temporarily
de-activated". As far as I understand the only options in the sidebar
are "selected" and "checked" (with mouse-over hover)
We are disallowing overlays between OOTB collections and user-defined
collections. As a result, when users try to overlay an OOTB with an
user-defined collection collection, we need to provide visual feedback
that the user-defined collection overlays have been de-activated,
until the user clicks out of the OOTB area.
The closest behavior we have today is providing visual feedback when
keyboard focus has shifted from one pane to another which is usually
accomplished by a greying or de-saturation of selection color.
Also, it might help if you explain the problem you're trying to solve
and give an example.
The insight in a nutshell is:
Switching between user-defined overlays and the OOTB collections
should be a modal experience. The kinds of things users do when they
user-define collections overlayed versus when they're looking at OOTB
collections are very different.
e.g.
+ Check out the Trash
+ Look for an email you Sent in the Outbox
+ See what new stuff came into the Dashboard
However, just because you temporarily want to do one of the above
tasks, doesn't mean you want to lose the configuration of overlays you
have in the user-defined collection area. (Overlays insofar as we've
observed them in calendar apps tend to be pretty static. People
usually have the same calendars overlayed most of the time, changing
them temporarily when they're trying to perform specific,
non-repetitive tasks.)
As a result, we need a way to let people 'change modes' to perform
without losing their overlay configuration.
Is that the kind of answer you were looking for?
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