[Design] Suggestion for Dashboard's general layout

Alec Flett alecf at osafoundation.org
Fri Jan 13 08:53:35 PST 2006


selva r wrote:
> Even though the user may be working on say the email tab, the Memo and 
> Task tabs could still show triage summary status numbers for items in 
> each of their subapplications within their tabs.  For example the Memo 
> subapplication tab might look like this:
>
Selva,
This is one of many suggestions that is completely disconnected from the 
actual product that OSAF is creating. It seems more like you're 
designing your own product in your head and using OSAF's design list as 
a place to dump your ideas. We already have 3 products (Chandler, Cosmo, 
Scooby) that are being designed list. We don't need another one.

I say this not because I don't understand what you're saying. I 
understand what a Tab is. I understand what a subapplication is. We've 
said many times that we're not doing "subapplications" and I'm not sure 
how you're suggesting tab content when there hasn't even been a coherent 
proposal to have tabs in the first place. In fact, we removed the tabs 
from the product over a year ago. There has also been no coherent 
proposal for a "slide in / slide out Calendar Day view panel" that you 
described earlier. You've gone into great detail describing what each of 
these features are, but have yet to explain how they fit into the 
existing design of Chandler - the product that we offer for download, 
the one that really exists.

I might suggest that before you make new posts that go into great detail 
about your own proposals to this design list, you stop and instead ask 
yourself if anyone has even validated the original proposal for 
Chandler. Has anyone actually replied and said "that seems like a good 
idea, could you explain?" My feeling is that most people read your long 
descriptions and throw up their hands with frustration because they 
don't know what you're talking about. I have yet to see anyone reply to 
say that one of your proposals is a good idea, and I'm sure one of the 
reasons is because nobody understands what your proposals have to do 
with Chandler.

They say pictures speak louder than words. Why don't you try getting a 
drawing program of some kind, and start creating mockup-screenshots of 
the designs you've proposed? The easiest way to do this is to start with 
a screenshot of the real Chandler, and then modify it in a drawing 
program to make it look like you'd like to see it look. This is how we 
do many of our proposals. In fact, please don't start with anything 
other than a real Chandler screenshot - we're not going to be 
redesigning the UI anytime soon so it would be best if your proposals 
were iterations on our existing product rather than some far-out 
proposal for a product that doesn't exist.

Instead of page-long descriptions of features nobody understands, we 
would at least see what you're talking about visually. You may have 
noticed that many of mimi's proposals include screenshots of what the 
product might look like and thus people are able to understand her 
designs and give constructive feedback. She also provides multiple 
alternatives in a visual form.

For making your mockups, here are a few options:
1) The Gimp - http://www.gimp.org/ - absolutely free, though a little 
hard to use
2) Fireworks - http://www.macromedia.com/software/fireworks/ - very easy 
to use, have a 30-day trial version
3) Photoshop http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ - also offers a 
30-day trial version

I'm sure there are many other free options out there.

Alec
> Memo
> 7, 10, 35
>
> The 7 might be in green showing that Memo tab has 7 now items to 
> attend to.  The 10 might be in yellow indicating there are 10 Later 
> items pending in this subapp.  The 35 might be in black color 
> indicating the number of Done status items in this subapp.
>
> Offering the user the choice between frames vs. tabs allows optimal 
> layout preferences for both large screen monitors and laptops with 
> small screens.
>
> The pull out side panels on the left and right sides of the main 
> Dashboard window for Collections / Preview text, and Calendar Day view 
> respectively, might be offered on the tabbed Dashboard set up the same 
> way as described recently for the three framed Dashboard.
>
> Selva
>
> */selva r <selva11r at yahoo.ca>/* wrote:
>
>     I'm making a modification to my previous suggestion given below on
>     a proposal for Dashboard's general layout. 
>
>     Since depicting collections probably will not require a lot of
>     space for most small collections, the pull out panel on the left
>     side of the main Dashboard window might be divided into a top and
>     bottom half along the middle with a demarcating line.  The top
>     half of this pull out panel could be used for depicting collections. 
>
>     The bottom half could be used for previewing the text of the item
>     selected within any of the three frames of the main Dashboard
>     window.  This way users could preview the initial portion of texts
>     from email items, memo items, and task items without having to
>     double click the item into the second level Dashboard window.
>
>     --Selva
>
>     */selva r <selva11r at yahoo.ca>/* wrote:
>
>         Due to recent discussion issues, I would like to suggest the
>         following general layout design for Dashboard.
>
>         For it to be powerful enough to handle moderate to large
>         volumes of data through Chandler's triage workflow system, I
>         would think that it would be best to have three frames.
>
>         1) Email InBox
>         2) Memos
>         3) Tasks
>
>         In addition, two slide in / slide out panels on each side
>         might be considered. 
>
>         On the left side of the main Dashboard window, we could have
>         the collections panel where collections associated with items
>         that are selected within the main Dashboard window could be
>         displayed even without having to double click the item into
>         the second level of Dashboard as previously described.
>
>         On the right side, we could have a slide in / slide out
>         Calendar Day view panel.
>
>         Both side panels might be extended or collapsed as per the
>         user's needs depending on their monitor screen size.
>
>         If we want to get fancy later on, the slide out Calendar Day
>         view panel might include a brief, one line five day weather
>         forecast at the bottom using typical weather icons which would
>         be automatically updated at regular intervals when the user is
>         on line.  Of course, this feature entails that during initial
>         installation of Chandler, the user would be querried about
>         their city of residence.
>
>         --Selva
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