On Jul 11, 2007, at 11:17 AM, Jennifer Bourey wrote: > > 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?
I wonder if we can design a quick heuristic to enable/disable the column switching based upon the restrictions. e.g. - no restrictions - current behavior - locked tab - disable column changes - column restrictions (anyone using these?) - allow additions, only allow reduction in columns if there's at least 2 unlocked columns. Of course, if the say rightmost column was the locked one this might be a little confusing. I'm not sure if some kind of translucent highlighting while column changing is selected to give visual cues might help address this -- maybe a lock icon and overlay over locked columns? Jason -- Jason Shao Application Developer Rutgers University, Office of Instructional & Research Technology v. 732-445-8726 | f. 732-445-5539 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http:// jay.shao.org -- You are currently subscribed to [email protected] as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/uportal-dev
