[Zope] Improving the folder view

[Alexander Staubo]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Paul Everitt [mailto:Paul@digicool.com]
>Sent: 10. juli 1999 21:11
>To: 'Alexander Staubo'; Zope Mailing List (E-mail)
>Subject: RE: [Zope] Improving the folder view
>
>
>
>Alexander writes:
>> As my folders grow in size, I become increasingly annoyed and
>> frustrated
>> with the folder object view's propensity towards disorganization. :-)
>
>Yep, I agree.
>
>> Is an improvement of this system planned?
>
>Unfortunately, no, but it should.  A little while back we spent some
>time looking at usability but never completed it.  For instance, we
>tried to clean up the error messages and provide helpful hints for
>certain errors.  Also, we tried to make the various "Add xx" screens
>more informative.  Unfortunately (a) we stopped halfway, (b) all of the
>error messages provide the same hints, and (c) not all of the add forms
>are informative.

I rather assumed you'd be concentrating on this later on when things
were nearing completion. ;-)

Ideally I think Zope's management screens should not be hardcoded as
DTML+HTML, as they are now, but in a sort of metaformat/metalanguage.
Why? Well, several reasons. First, every once in a while something comes
up that means most management pages must be changed or "cleaned up" or
"brought up-to-date" somehow. Secondly because this way we could, at
some point in the future at least, extend Zope management to some
non-web system (eg., MMC on Windows, or Java, or whatever). Thirdly
because what I envision would guarantee consistence across all
management interfaces. I realize it's a huge step, and it might not be
worthwhile, but I think it's a worthy "research" subject. Essentially
this "metalanguage" would simply describe the "manageable" information
in a generic way using a rich syntax that would be able to encompass any
kind of information you'd possibly want to present. The language would
be parsed and converted to HTML on the fly to generate a nice "wizard"
appearance.

I realize this idea might be too vast in scope, but the payoff would be
great. Think about it: If you could embed help strings in this language,
you would be able to show a piece of helpful information about every
kind of management information in the system. (Btw, you could use
JavaScript "mouseover" to trigger these help strings, for instance
inside a separate, smaller frame.) You could probably have a per-user
setting that turned off the help stuff if necessary. And users could
customize their management interface -- anything from which columns to
include, level of detail, even language, if this was supported by the
metalanguage framework.

Or maybe I should keep my mouth shut. ;-)

>I'd appreciate your views on the error messages (as well as everyone
>else's).

I cited a number of issues on zope-dev. (See my post on July 6, subject
"RE: [Zope-dev] DocumentTemplate packaging suggestion".)

>> I have a few suggestions myself.
>>
[snip]

>
>> - Finally there is the sorting. Zope currently sorts
>case-sensitively,
>> which means if you have "Article", "Documents", "acl_users",
>> then that's
>> exactly the sort order you'd get. The logical sorting method would be
>> "acl_users", "Article", "Document". In most GUIs it is also
>
>Hmm, I contend that this sorting method isn't as common in other
>systems.  Windows does because it comes from a heritage that makes no
>case distinction.  Unix sorts things based on case-sensitivity.

Fine, but that is not necessarily an argument in favour of
user-friendliness. ;-)

>> common to --
>> at least as an option -- group directories together at the top. So if
>> Documents and acl_users were folders, the order would be "acl_users",
>> "Documents", "Article".
>
>That might be appropriate.
>
>> In case there is doubt in your minds about the practical
>> effect of such
>> changes, I've prepared a demonstration, here::
>>
>>   http://www.mop.no/~alex/soaptest/oldversion.html (this is
>how things
>> are done today)
>>   http://www.mop.no/~alex/soaptest/newversion.html (this is
>> the proposed
>> reorg)
>
>I like yours better.
>
>> While we're at it, columns for "last modified" and "author" would be
>
>Can you add those as well to your demo?

Done.

>Also, do you envision chopping
>off long titles with the "..." operation?  If so, could you add that to
>your demo as well?

I think perhaps titles should simply be allowed to wrap. Don't you
agree? After all we can't predict the size of the user's window. Maybe
he has a huge window. I vote for wrapping.

>> nice, too. I envision a system where you would define
>columns and sort
>> settings in the control panel somehow. Of course, this raises the
>> question of whether such settings should be available on a per-user
>> basis or as one global setting that applies to all managers.
>
>Yes, it does raise that issue :^)  Of course you could just set a
>cookie.  Why don't you try adding <th> column headers that are
>clickable?  Clicking them would (a) set a cookie for the preference and
>(b) change the sort order.

Good point. I'd like to patch Zope to do this, but I haven't actually
been able to get it to run on our Linux box, and you guys haven't
responded to my problem reports, and so... (mumble mumble) That's
annoying. But it would be stupid of me to submit a patch for 1.11.0pr1,
which is what I'm sitting with now.

>While we're in such territory (and linking to your last post about the
>disappearing add button), what are some ideas on overhauling the add
>list?  Here are two proposals:
>
>1) Filter the items based on what roles you have.

Sort of like skip_unauthorized on metatypes, then?

>2) Only list the "core" things and have an entry for a "wizard".  This
>would take you to a page where all add-able things are grouped by
>Product, with text explaining what they are.

This is a good idea.

Another possibility is using JavaScript and DHTML to arrange object
types in a cascading popup menu. This is entirely feasible, though the
HTML would have to check if the user was running a DHTML-complient
browser, and if not, revert to the old-style menu.

--
Alexander Staubo             http://www.mop.no/~alex/
"What the hell, he thought, you're only young once, and threw
himself out of the window. That would at least keep the element of
surprise on his side."
--Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_