7 Aug
2009
7 Aug
'09
10:15 p.m.
Anca Paula Luca wrote:
Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
At this point, I am afraid that these two will take up too much space, while
being slightly redundant. Since a description can be quite long, it could span
on 2 lines of text. + 1 line the title = 3 lines in the dialog header. Right now
the header is only one line of text. An experiment showed it to take over twice
the space if a description is included and this space would be taken from the
content of the dialog. With even more help labels (for fields, for example) this
can turn into a space issue. For example, in the case of a link target document
selection we would have a title + description in the header, then the tabs strip
then another help label about how the selection should be made in the selected
tab and only after that the actual list of pages to select from.
Now, we have two choices for the header:
1/ we make it variable height and resizes with its content.
advantages: leaves more space when it's not there, flexible with the size of
text to encapsulate
disadvantages: variable size is disturbing. Even so, the proposal was to have
descriptions for steps everywhere so not much space would be saved. Also, it
could be technically hard to implement the variable size correctly cross browser
& platform and flexible with i18n.
2/ fixed height, to comprise 2-3 lines of description text, ensuring that all
labels would fit. If description is missing, the title would be vertically centered.
advantages: fixed size consistent across multiple steps & dialogs, potentially
easy to implement
disadvantages: could take too much space for nothing, all descriptions would
need to fit the available space.
3/ Drop the description in the header, as the current implementation is.
advantages: more space
disadvantages: one explanation less (do we really need it except for the macro
parameters dialog?)
I would go for 3) with appropriate wording on dialog titles, fields help labels,
and wizard step titles.
Overall, it feels like too many descriptions there by default, too much text,
which could cause problems to in most of the cases, when users already know how
to use the wysiwyg and the text would just take up space for nothing.
WDYT?
Thanks,
Anca
Hi Devs,
Anca asked me to finalize the overall look of dialog boxes in the WYSIWYG so
that she can work on it and polish it for the 2.0 release. Right now the
issue is that we're using a different look for the link, image & macro
dialog boxes which poses a consistency problem.
I've been working with Cati on a proposal for the look of the overall box -
not for the inner part of the box. Proposals for the standardization of the
inner part of the box will come later. The dialog box uses a wizard-like
look and follows the vertical form principles proposed by Cati in a previous
email (thus the primary action button at the bottom left, to follow the
user's eye flow). Its "hidden" features are:
- Buttons can be in an enabled or disabled mode depending of what the
current step is
- All buttons are displayed all the time so that they don't move from one
screen to the next
- Buttons' labels are configurable
- There is no "Cancel" button, the cross at the top right of the dialog
box plays that role
- The title in the top bar doesn't change and its name is the same as the
associated toolbar button (clicking on "Link" opens a dialog box called
"Link")
The user never clicks on just "Link", it is always a submenu item that it
chooses ("Wiki page", "Attached file", etc). I assume the dialog
title should be
a combination of the two, since only the name of the submenu item is far from
suggestive.
wdyt?
- The "Wizard Step Title" reflects
what's happening at the current step:
"Page Selection" , "Code Macro" , "Image Selection"
- The description tells the user what to do at the current step: "Select
the page to link to" , "Select the image to insert" , "Fill in
macro
parameters"
After discussion we came to the conclusion that the description will tell the
user what will be the result of the current step, and not instructions about how
to do it. All instructions will go next to the field in the form of the wizard step.
Also this description can be skipped if the title is good enough, to avoid
redundancy. - Double-clicking on an item (an image, a page
name) acts in the same
fashion as selecting it and clicking the "Next" button. If the
"Next" button
is disabled at the current step, double-clicking works as the primary action
("Insert" , "Create")
Also, webforms usually are submitted when enter is hit in one of their fields.
We also do this currently in our dialog forms. In the case when "Finish" and
"Next" are both enabled, which one should be the one executed by enter? I'd
go
for "Next" for consistency.
Also, for the case when the wysiwyg dialog is not a wizard (table, importer
dialogs for the moment), we have two options for the wizard step title:
1/ keep the Wizard Step and Descriptions in place, to contain detailed
description of the action to be executed, for consistency reasons. While the
dialog title will be the same as the toolbar button / menu clicked, the Wizard
Step title will contain a more detailed description of the action and the
description will probably be missing most of the times since it's redundant.
2/ we remove the top bar completely, as it currently is the case for the table &
importer dialogs, to avoid crowding the dialogs with redundant information (the
title of the dialog should be enough information, as it's only one action and
that is the actual name of the action -- as opposed to wizard steps where
differentiation of various subactions is needed).
Guillaume's suggestion was for strong consistency, therefore 1/. I think that,
while it could turn out useful, it can be confusing to have multiple titles for
a dialog when they refer to the same action.
wdyt?
In general, we would love some feedback about the UI / UX of the wysiwyg
dialogs, things that should be polished for a final version.
Thanks,
Anca
The mockups are located at:
http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Mockups/GenericMacroDialog
WDYT?
Guillaume
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