Hi Michelle,

I took a quick test drive of the 2 versions (on Win XP, IE 7) and I think the 
new version does a much better job of showing the user what he or she is 
actually doing with the elements being reordered - I find it much easier to 
work with. One recommendation - when I drag the weather portlet, for example, 
upwards to move it above the calendar on your test page, the calendar stays 
where it is; it does not move down until you let go of the weather box. Would 
it not be more obvious where the drop location was going to be if the calendar 
portlet moved down as you started dragging the weather portlet up, leaving an 
empty space between the two for the drop? Obviously this approach has the 
disadvantage of losing the visual cue for the original location of the weather 
portlet as it would be "covered over" by the moved calendar portlet but to me 
the advantages of this design outweigh the disadvantages - it would make it 
much clearer where the dropped item would be placed. (I also exper!
 ienced some intermittent flashing of background items when a portlet is being 
slowly dragged that is a bit distracting and might confuse those with certain 
visual or cognitive disabilities.)

Herb

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:57:23 -0400
From: "Michelle D'Souza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Portlet Drag and Drop
To: fluid-work <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

Hi,

I know there has been some conversation about the best user experience  
for reordering portlets. I thought it would be useful if I built an  
example to show the alternate user experience.

You can see the new experience here: 
http://build.fluidproject.org/sakai-imagegallery-tool/sample-code/reorderer/portal/portalWithAvatarClone.html
and the original experience here: 
http://build.fluidproject.org/sakai-imagegallery-tool/sample-code/reorderer/portal/portal.html

One of the problems with the new example is that it also showcases one  
of our evil bugs. :)  The bug is that the drop target shows up  
somewhere but the portlet drops elsewhere.
http://issues.fluidproject.org/browse/FLUID-407  It's quite a tricky  
little bug from a technical standpoint because the underlying problem  
is that we are getting browser events in the wrong order.  We have a  
strategy for working around this issue but it is quite complex and  
will take a while to implement.

Michelle


------------------------------------------------------
Michelle D'Souza
Software Developer, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre
University of Toronto


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