Heikki Toivonen wrote:
I am somewhat confused about the new dashboard and default view. I look
at the toolbar and see that calendar is selected, and I see (and can
create) more events, yet I don't see the calendar view. I look at View
menu, which has the Calendar entry selected. Looking through the other
menus I have no idea how to get a calendar view.
I think Mimi's idea was that the toolbar act as a "kind filter" not as a
"view selector". The problem now is that it clashes with the View menu
since it says there "View" and not "Filter". It's confusing clearly...
The only reason why I actually know calendar view works and how to get
to it was by reading John's checkins comments where he mentioned that
you need to create a collection. And that still does not show the
dashboard items in the calendar view.
And now that I have a collection of my own and the dashboard, clicking
between them switches between table view and calendar view even though
both show events.
I am not sure what would be the best way to change this, but the current
situation feels like a wrong approach.
I think I would expect a PIM to start with a calendar view.
I also think that Dashboard acts so differently from all the other
collections in the sidebar that I don't think it should be in the
sidebar at all. I think it should be a new button on the toolbar.
The other intent of Mimi was that, when in the Dashboard, you are there
to do triage of whatever kind of items you selected in the toolbar. The
calendar view is not great for triage for sure.
The problem though is that the Dashboard is displayed at the same level
as a collection. Having it in the toolbar though would prevent the "kind
filtering" to happen. Also note that, though it's confusing to see
Dashboard with a table view all the time, it seems natural not to have a
calendar view for "In", "Out" and "Trash".
Another problem is that the triage view (the summary table view) is used
for all kinds and all collections except user defined Calendar, making
it not that special after all: I can do triage of items without being in
the Dashboard. So that dilutes the usefulness of having Dashboard being
special.
Looks like the bottom of the problem is that the notions of "filtering"
and "view" are somewhat mixed throughout the UI while, actually, they
are not in the implementation logic. This causes confusion.
Possible solutions :
a) make the "kind filter" and "view" clearly separated and different in
the UI: I don't know where we can add yet another set of icons for kinds
that could basically be checked in/out like check boxes. The toolbar
buttons should, I think, be the view selectors (debatable).
b) collide "kind filter" and "view" in a consistent manner: that would
mean showing the Dashboard as a calendar when calendar is selected. That
turns the "Dashboard" into effectively an "All my items" collection as
before.
Is there a c)?
Cheers,
- Philippe
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