[Design] Fwd: [Bug 6553] Offline mode

[Brian Kirsch]

On Nov 4, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> My bad, I kept going on the bug when I should have been posting  
> comments to the list ;o)
>
> In reply to Brian's comment below, the proposal I put forth in the  
> bug would unify 'Go offline' for sharing and email by allowing the  
> user to essentially suspend syncing of all shares. I think unless  
> we can unify these concepts for Preview, my sense is that it will  
> be too confusing to make 'Go offline' for email available for the  
> end-user. However, we can certainly keep it in the Test menu for  
> developers.

Hi Mimi,
I think it is worth taking a bit of time to get this right for  
preview. I agree that we want a unified concept of go online / go  
offline. It would make no sense to me to have the ability to take  
email offline while sharing is still online. It should be one action  
for Preview where go offline takes everything offline. That is the  
easiest concept for users to understand and is also the easiest task  
to accomplish from a development standpoint.  It is also the origins  
of bug 6553 where developers wanted the ability to test Chandler  
without network operations via a --offline flag. If based on user  
feedback something more complex is desired then we can revise for  
Chandler 1.0.

It seems to me the concept we have for Sharing of taking specific  
collections on or off line may be the wrong terminology and thus  
refining will make this decision clearer.

When selecting a collection for sharing there is the take online /  
offline toggle menu item. But really what one is saying is no longer  
sync this specific collection. Yes the collection is 'offline', but  
the rest of the app is online which I think is a confusing concept  
for novice computer users. By changing the sharing verbiage to better  
reflect what is happening it may clear up the offline / online  
discussion.

We are not taking sharing offline but are telling the sharing service  
to not sync a specific share. Again, the rest of sharing is online as  
are the other Chandler network services. Instead, the wording could  
be something like "Disable syncing of 'In' collection' and 'Enable  
syncing of 'In' collection'.

Changing this wording paves the way for the addition of a 'Go  
Offline'  File menu item that takes the entire app (email, sharing,  
rss, etc) offline.

That's my two cents :)

-Brian


>
> ------- Comment #17 From Mimi Yin 2006-11-03 14:15 PST [reply] -------
> Yes, but in  Chandler the mental model we're trying to promote is  
> that Sharing
> is all things Communications and agnostic to protocol. Sharing  
> includes:
>
> IMAP, POP, WebDAV, CalDAV, RSS and eventually IM, SMS, VoIP etc.
>
> If we have a single 'Go offline' menu that includes email and  
> sharing, I think
> it be confusing to have it under the File menurather than the Share  
> menu.
> Especially because all the Sync related stuff for both Email and  
> Sharing are
> under the Share menu.
>
> ------- Comment #18 From Brian Kirsch 2006-11-03 17:11 PST [reply]  
> -------
> I think the key issue is not which menu header to place the offline  
> toggle
> under but how will the toggle work. Right now the online / offline  
> toggle is
> very specific to sharing of individual collections. As stated  
> earlier this is
> not the right model for mail or RSS or VOIP or any of the other  
> sharing
> protocols outside of CalDAV / WebDAV.
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
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