[Design] Re: Clarification

John Anderson john at osafoundation.org
Wed Aug 2 13:23:57 PDT 2006


Mimi Yin wrote:
>> If so, then what about when you have multiple "Out of the Box" 
>> collections selected? Does the summary view display the last selected 
>> collection?
>
> You can't. The checkbox-rollover / overlay widget is disabled for OOTB 
> collection.
Currently shift-click in tables, e.g. the sidebar, adds to the 
selection, so it is possible to have multiple collections selected. This 
is useful for deleting multiple user collections, among other things.
>
>> As an alternative to graying out the checked collections when an "Out 
>> of the Box" collection is selected, how about unchecking them 
>> (unselecting "Out of the Box" collections would restore the previous 
>> checked state).
>
> What is your thinking behind this proposal? Currently when focus 
> shifts from one pane to another (e.g. sidebar to summary pane and vice 
> versa), we don't get rid of the selection, instead we dim it out.
I was thinking of something different: Suppose you have a "User" 
collection checked. When you select an "Out of the Box" collection the 
"User" collection's check would disappear. If you unselected the "Out of 
the Box" collection the "User" collection's check would reappear.

However, I'm inclined to go with the proposal below because it seems 
easier to implement.
>
>> Another possibility I've been thinking about is having two separate 
>> tables in the sidebar, one for the "Out of the Box" collections and 
>> one for the user collections.  This makes it really easy to put a 
>> divider line between them (other options have a host of messy 
>> complications). At first I thought two tables would be difficult 
>> because they each have a separate selection. However two separate 
>> selections might be just what you want: When the "Out of the Box" 
>> table has the focus the "User collection" table selection is drawn 
>> lighter. Whichever table has the focus displays it's selected (and 
>> checked in the case of  the "User collections") collections in the 
>> summary view.
>>
>> It also makes it easier to deal with reordering collections in the 
>> tables if and when we allow that -- you're limited to reordering 
>> collections within each table but you can't move collections between 
>> tables.
>
> Cool. That sounds like it matches the user mental model.
>
>


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