[Design] Changing views in Chandler

[D John Anderson]

>
> I think something got lost in the thread. What I'm concerned about  
> is that the View menu items:
>  1. Introduce new views that are subtly different from the views  
> you get by switching App areas (ie. Table versus Dashboard); and

Actually, unless I'm missing something, the views you get to are  
exactly the same as the views you get by switching App areas -- at  
least that's the way the code works. We use the same view code for  
both situations, which is why it was so easy to implement. Of course  
you can have more than one view of the same type as you navigate  
between different collections.

> 2. There's isn't an intuitive way to get back to the Search results  
> view, once you've switched away from it using the View selector  
> menu items.

By changing the view I don't think of it as "switching away" from the  
results, but instead just viewing the same results in a different  
view. If the results are originally displayed in a Table view and you  
change the view of the results to Calendar view, you can get back to  
where you were by choosing Table view from the menu.

One thing that Chandler does, which I think users have trouble with,  
is change both the view and the collection items you are viewing at  
the same time as you navigate through the app area and collections in  
the sidebar.  The view selector doesn't work this way. It never  
affects the collection of items you are viewing, only the view that  
they are presented in. It's useful when Chandler's "guess" about what  
view you want isn't what you actually want.

>
> If we can return search results in the Dashboard view and have Day  
> view, Week view and (Triage) Table view as the 3 options, then I  
> think we're good to go for Preview.

There is subtle a problem with implementing your proposed design as  
the code exists today. We can't easily allow the Day view and Week  
view to be separate views, since currently we don't change the view  
when you switch between Day and Week in the calendar. We might be  
able to add a bunch of special case code, but I'm not sure the  
complication is worth it -- and then there's our short schedule.

Even if we rewrote the calendar to be two different views, which  
isn't trivial, it's awkward for us to switch the views when choosing  
between Day and Week view as we do today. If this all seems confusing  
a conversation in front of a whiteboard might help.

John