#16212: Improve multiple sort UX
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Reporter: idangazit | Owner: nobody
Type: New | Status: new
feature | Component: contrib.admin
Milestone: | Severity: Normal
Version: SVN | Keywords:
Resolution: | Has patch: 0
Triage Stage: Design | Needs tests: 0
decision needed | Easy pickings: 0
Needs documentation: 0 |
Patch needs improvement: 0 |
UI/UX: 1 |
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Comment (by julien):
I don't want the discussion to go in every direction but I thought I'd
throw my 2 cents in :)
In ticket:11868#comment:14, I pointed out an example making use of SHIFT-
click: http://tablesorter.com/docs/#Examples
However, I think this is a bad idea, for 2 reasons:
1. This can only properly work if there is no page refresh, like in that
tablesorter example. If the page is refreshed after every click, then it
would actually be very hard to remember to press SHIFT after the page has
reloaded to select other column headers.
2. One big difference between web apps and desktop apps is that it is
extremely rare in web interfaces to use actions like SHIFT-click, COMMAND-
CLICK, CTRL-click, double-click or right-click. About every mouse action
on the web is basically a simple left-click, and users have become
accustomed to that. For that reason, an interface requiring the use of
SHIFT-click would be unintuitive and would also require adding some sort
of help text, which would add clutter and cognitive load.
Also, moving the sorting controls to the sidebar would cause at least 2
drawbacks:
1. The controls would be detached from the source of the action. You would
have to look back and forth between the sidebar and the column headers to
make sense of the interface and to make adjustments.
2. We would lose some screen real estate. The sidebar would always be
displayed, even if there are no filters (currently the sidebar isn't
displayed if there are no filters, giving more space for the changelist
result table). The controls would also add clutter on the interface and
would potentially attract more attention that they really deserve.
I actually think that the current interface is already pretty good. My
main issue with it is the lack of visual feedback for the available
actions and the inability to remove sorting columns other than via the
popup.
So, I have attached a patch with a few small changes which, in my opinion,
improve the interface while avoiding all the drawbacks mentioned above. It
basically keeps everything the same, except:
* added hover states and tooltips for headers, cog, position numbers and
up/down arrows.
* clicking an arrow toggles the corresponding field's sorting without
changing the sorting priorities.
* hovering a position number replaces the number with a red cross which,
when clicked, removes that field from the sorting.
The only thing that still can only be done from the popup is "Reset
sorting", so maybe the popup could be entirely be removed and the cog icon
could be replaced by some other icon to directly reset the sorting.
Hopefully this is useful to the discussion. If not, that's cool, I'm not
too precious about it :p
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/16212#comment:5>
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