On Jun 9, 9:45 am, Luke Plant <[email protected]> wrote: > In the new admin sorting UI, which now supports sorting on multiple > fields, the behaviour can be described by the following two rules: > > 1. If you click on a header, it is made the primary sort field > (with others moved down the list as necessary). > > 2. If you click on a header that was already part of the sorting, > the sort order for that field is reversed.
<snip> > We could change the 2nd rule to: > > 2. If you click on a header that was already the primary sort field, > the sort order for that field is reversed. The difficulty in the interface design here is that there are three different possible behaviours, all operated by the same user action (i.e. clicking on a header): selecting a field for sorting, ordering the sorting fields, and toggling sorting for a given field. I actually think that the current interface already does a pretty good job dealing with this. Having two different behaviours for the same action, as suggested by your new #2 rule, would actually make it less intuitive and potentially confusing, I think. Whatever the behaviour, good or bad, it's always better if the user can predict it (and quickly fix it if necessary). Perhaps the interface could be improved by dissociating the clicking on the header and the clicking on the arrow icons. Clicking on the header would do exactly the same as currently, i.e. select the field for sorting, make it the primary sorting field, and toggle it. Then, clicking specifically on the arrow icon would simply toggle the sorting for that field, without making it the primary sorting field (unless it already is) and without changing the order of sorting fields. Separately highlighting the arrow icons and the header in visually different ways on mouse hover (e.g. change the header's background when hovered, display an arrow icon with a different colour when hovered) would indicate that both are associated with two different behaviours. Adding tooltip texts would also help (e.g. for the arrow icon: "Toggle the sorting for this field without affecting the order of sorting fields"). I think this would resolve the main issue for me with this interface, which is that it's frustrating having to change the order of sorting fields when all you want is toggle a given sorting field. This is already possible to do via clicking "toggle" in the popup, but I think that clicking directly on the arrow would feel better and be more intuitive. It is a complex interface problem. Generally in this case it's OK if the user doesn't get exactly what she wants in the first go, but at least the interface should be forgiving and recovery should be quick. My two cents ;-) Julien -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
