Yes, that's most part of the work. I will think about it and elaborate more my proposition. Of course any help is welcome. I guess we will have to make a consensus about which fields are preferably shown. I regret to have used "mandatory" or even "required" as this has no sense as I previously wrote because then we will end with screens with only very few fields when other fields would be hidden. We have to make some fuzzy choices here...
BTW I made a 1st answer to Andrew Sykes in another post... Jacques PS: > > So, how do we decide which fields are required (mandatory) or not? > > -David > > > On Jan 21, 2007, at 4:28 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote: > > > After an exchange with Ian McNulty about UI clarification, I > > thought a bit for a solution (actually I did not thought a lot, the > > idea was there, clear, when I waked up ;o) > > > > Ian is not the 1st to complain about backend complexity. Yes, my > > propostion is only about backend. Because IMO eCommerce and POS > > (and handheld now) are more there for demo and POC purposes. They > > are not intended to be used as is but are ready to be enhanced, > > proposing a way to go. They are meta-templates actually. On the > > other hand and that's why backend is mostly build with screen and > > form widgets : it does not need to be too sophisticated (that does > > not mean that you can't build sophisticated UI with widgets ;). > > > > From my experience when it comes to backend, even big companies (I > > mean multinational corporations) are not inclined to put a lot > > money in. They will perhaps want some enhancements here an there > > but they do no want to re-create it all. This to said that we may > > try to ease its use even for them. > > > > My proposition : some screens (for instance Catalog/Product, > > Catalog/Store, etc.) are always showing all the possible fields to > > use. We may add (and generalize everywhere possible) a way to hide > > (or show) not mandatory fields or maybe not important fields > > (because in most case showing only mandatory fields make no sense). > > For instance we may put 2 buttons near language set zone at top of > > screen : "show (or hide) required fields" or something like that. > > This is easy to achieve and will reassure users about the backend > > usability (ergonomy). We only have to create 2 set of fields for > > each screen. If a screen is not concerned the sets will be the same > > and the buttons will have no action, simple isn' it ? > > > > What do you think ? > > > > Jacques > >
