Hi all,

I've fixed a number of the outstanding uPortal 2.6 bugs involving the  
Ajax UI not respecting DLM restrictions.  However, I'm unclear on the  
best way to fix a number of the remaining scenarios.

In particular, the UI we created for column editing presents  
conflicts with DLM's internals that don't seem easy to reconcile.  To  
simplify the interface for our users, we changed from a model where  
users create and remove individual columns to one where users simply  
choose between one and some fixed number of columns.  When columns  
are eliminated, the contained channels are appended to the new last  
column, rather than deleted from the layout.  In our user testing,  
this seemed to eliminate confusion.

This works great at Yale, where we never lock columns.  However, what  
do we do when DLM restrictions for columns have been set?  The ajax  
UI currently does the following:

1. When the user decreases the number of columns, delete columns as  
needed from the right-hand side, and append all contained columns to  
the end of the last preserved column.
2. When the user increases the number of columns, append columns as  
necessary to the right-hand side.

I can envision a number of potential conflicts between this model and  
that of DLM:

1.  User tries to change from two columns to one column.  The second  
column is deleteable, but the first column is locked down such that  
the user can't add new channels.  The AJAX UI would try to delete the  
second column and move all the channels to the first column (which  
isn't allowed).
2.  User tries to change from two columns to one column.  The second  
column is not deletable, but the first column is.  In this case, the  
AJAX UI would try to delete the second column and fail, although if  
it tried to delete the first instead, it could decrease the column  
count to one, as the user requested.

I hate to design a user interface based on the internal layout  
representation of the java code, but I'm not sure how to sort out the  
conflicts between these two models.  What do we want to do?

- Jen

---------------------------------
Jennifer Bourey
Technology and Planning
Yale University ITS
203.432.5718




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