Print Menu and others info/actions in general (was Re: [xwiki-dev] [Vote] Refactoring the Print menu)

[Sergiu Dumitriu]

On 5/28/07, Vincent Massol <vincent at massol.net> wrote:
> Hi Sergiu,
>
> On May 27, 2007, at 9:28 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > The current structure of the menu is "Edit, Show, Print, Delete,
> > Rename", with Print containing "Preview, PDF", and we've also added
> > RTF recently. Print is not a good name for this menu, because:
> > - it is imperative. I'd expect the browser to actually print
> > something, if I didn't know how browsers work.
> > - PDF and RTF are not actually printed stuff, so they don't quite
> > fit in there.
> > - We're also thinking of adding a XAR quick export, which does not fit
> > anywhere right now
> >
> > So, a better structure would be: "Edit, Show, Export, Delete, Rename",
> > with Export containing "PDF, RTF, XML, XAR". Print preview should be
> > renamed to "Printable version" or something similar, and should go in
> > "Show" or "Export" (the former is better).
> >
> > Ludovic says that "Printable version" is too long, but this is the
> > term used on most sites (or Printer friendly version), and it's not
> > longer than "Page Access Rights", for instance, which is another
> > submenu entry.
>
> My view on this:
>
> * We need to decide if we allow users to do XAR exports or not. IF
> XAR export is considered an admin action then it should go in the
> Administration page (in the export tab)

I don't know if the XAR export is for admins only, but it's certainly
for advanced users only. So in the Simple user mode it shouldn't be in
the menu.

I think it could be used by normal users. There's a difference between
developer and administrator, and a developer might want to export his
ultra-cool panel he just developed and post it on xwiki.org, or attach
it to a JIRA issue.

> * I think we need to keep the top menu as empty as possible. I would
> prefer we move export actions somewhere else.

Perhaps this is something for a different skin. Albatross performs
poorly on small screens (including 1024x768).

Indeed, the current menu is a bit too crowded. Normal users don't want
to view the history, export the XML version, or edit classes.

A normal user, without admin rights and in Simple mode, has the following menu:

Edit
Show -> Comments, Attachments, History
Print -> Preview, PDF
Rename

The comments and attachments are displayed at the bottom of the page,
and the history is not something everybody wants to see. So this menu
could be removed.

Such a basic user might be interested in the PrinterFriendly, PDF or
RTF version, but not XML or XAR. These modes could all go in a toolbar
with icons, but where to put this toolbar?

> * I think we need a page for advanced operations/information (could
> be one or 2 pages). Here are some stuff we could put in there:
>    - Exports
>    - RSS feeds for the space/page
>    - Incoming links/Outgoing links
>    - Orphaned pages
>    - History
>    - Statistics

+1

> * It could be done with an "Advanced" button in the top menu or some
> icons at the top of each page like an info icon for going to an
> information page listing incoming/outgoing links, orphaned pages,
> stats for the page, rss feeds, etc. We could have another button for
> exports.
> * For the print I would leave the "Print" button but clicking on it
> would do print preview. This is because it's how browsers work. You
> don't print directly, you use the browser print feature so I think
> it's ok to generate the printable page. We could popup a dialog box
> telling the user the click the print button of their browser or maybe
> we could call it directly (not sure if this works for all browsers).
>

I still think it's better under Show, or an icon on a toolbar.

> WDYT?
>
>

Sergiu
-- 
http://purl.org/net/sergiu