Mrinal--
sorry you've been sick. Thank you for offering to lead tasks 4 and 5:
At 2:56 PM +0530 1/16/09, Mrinal Wadhwa wrote:
I think, my involvement will make most sense in goals 4 and 5 from your list
4. Make a preliminary list of API calls the UIs will need.
5. Implement the first stage end-user UI.
With regard to the first stage end user UI, I think you could easily
start at any time, putting in place the framework I outlined in my
comments document. I suggest the following:
o Get the three-pane (three-column) main window layout working, with
the show/hide buttons.
o Get the messages formatted per the comments document.
o Get the overall shrink/expand functionality working (to make the
window tiny vs fullsize). Initially don't worry about trying to put
activity indicators in the shrunken view.
o Make it lay out and behave well under these conditions:
-- Safari and Firefox on Mac OS
-- Safari, Firefox and IE6 on Windows XP
-- Safari, Firefox and IE7 on Windows Vista
-- Firefox on Linux (?)
-- With browser font-size upsized or downsized two increments by the user.
o In the left pane make it possible to insert sections (that
show/hide their contents when you click the section titles) and make
it possible to insert items in the sections that affect the display
in the center and right panes.
o Make it so that clicking an item in the left pane can display the
center and right panes separately, or combine them into one large
pane (as when displaying help or "about" info).
o Put in place dummy pages for help, about, policies, etc. (whatever
the static info pages were that I mentioned in the comments doc).
o Create the help system infrastructure, basically consisting of a
data structure and method for defining a hierarchy of help pages,
plus a two-pane window that shows the table of contents as a tree in
the left pane and a selected help page in the right pane.
o Create the login system. Make the login page and main end-user UI
take turns occupying the same window. The login "page" should
include the stub logic for registering as a new user, recovering
password, opening the help system, contacting an administrator, and
logging in. When the user logs out of the main UI, the login page
should replace the main UI in the same window.
All that should keep you busy for a long time :-).
What do you think?
--Bill
--
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Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design
(505) 346-3080 * [email protected] * http://billfernandez.com
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