Folks:
Thanks to Matt Stevens and Steve Campbell for their comments on sub-maps. These
are great questions, and we left them open because we didn't have clear answers
when we rolled out version 4.0. Let me rephrase them, and open the list to
discussion.
1) Currently, a top-level icon blinks red whenever there are down or
acknowledged devices on its sub-map.
Questions:
- Matt and Steve suggested that a top-level icon should be blue if everything
on its sub-map has been acknowledged. Do you agree? Is there some other
representation that would be better?
- Should InterMapper allow you to acknowledge everything on a sub-map by
acknowledging the top-level icon? Or should you be required to open the sub-map
and explicitly acknowledge devices?
2) What if, in the traditional InterMapper (Classic/MacOS X with GUI), you could
command- or control-click to get a contextual menu that would "Open sub-map".
Would that be useful?
3) Hierarchy of maps. This gets tricky, especially when people make lots of
maps. Here's a suggestion that allows for a hierarchical menu of maps:
InterMapper's Windows menu should show all the maps, but list all the maps that
contain sub-maps at the top, with a ">" for a submenu, and the "leaf maps" at
the bottom. So far, so good.
Questions:
- Should the menu hierarchy be multi-level? That is, if a top-level map had
sub-maps that each had their own sub-maps, should the menu hierarchy cascade?
- Should the mid-level sub-maps be listed at the top of the Windows menu
(because they have sub-maps)?
- Would sub-maps ever be shared between higher level maps? (If so, that rules
out a simple "go to parent map" command.)
- Would a sub-map ever have a parent map as a sub-map? Is it ever useful to
make a loop, where MapA watches MapB which watches MapC, which itself watches
MapA? (And Bill, Tex, and Christopher: does anything bad happen if someone does
this? :-)
4) How useful would it be to have a "site map" of the map hierarchy? (After all,
we have a tool that's pretty good at drawing interconnections between items :-)
5) We need a concise name for "the icon on the top-level map that represents the
most serious condition on the sub-map". What should we call that thing?
6) What other things could we do to make sub-maps more valuable?
Rich Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dartware, LLC http://www.dartware.com
10 Buck Road, PO Box 130 Telephone: 603-643-2268
Hanover, NH 03755-0130 USA Fax: 603-643-2289
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