I got an offlist comment about reorderer which made me revisit the site and I got confused. Nico helped me out. The issue is that components are presented as peers, but (as Nico presented it) the reordered is like a parent (or container component) for two other components - lightbox and layout customiser. So if we are looking at using layout customiser, we are necessarily looking at using Reorderer.
I had not properly understood this and would suggest that the site presentation of all components as peers does not help discovery of this relationship/dependency. Reusing the lightbox image for the reorderer component at http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Components does not help. A parent component that does not have a UI might be better represented by a snippet of code image. Just a suggestion. John On 5 Sep 2008, at 14:50, Jess Mitchell wrote: > John, > > Thanks so much for your thoughtful email! This is great feedback > and we're excited to make this new tool better. > > You have indeed mentioned some of the points that we're working on, > namely: a template for the component pages that will have anchored > sections that clearly match up with the elements in the indicator > and the progress indicator situated within that page -- that should > help with some understandability. We'll also have the progress > indicators living on that page eventually. > > But you also bring up some really good points that we need to > address: namely "completeness" and what it means, explaining > "families" of components like reorderer, and how to represent > features of the components we haven't even thought of adding, but > will be added to a "complete" component? So, we've got some work to > do on this. > > We look forward to working with y'all on implementation! And have > Nico get in touch with us about implementation of the Layout > Customizer. > > Best, > Jess > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Jess Mitchell > Project Manager / Fluid Project > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > / w / 617.326.7753 / c / 919.599.5378 > jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.fluidproject.org > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > On Sep 5, 2008, at 4:41 AM, John Norman wrote: > >> First I want to say this is a great resource, BUT... >> >> I just had occasion to actually want to *use* a progress indicator. >> This is good news, Nico came to me saying he wanted to put the Fluid >> Reorderer into the Sakai UX work. So first I went to look at his demo >> of it working with the Nathan's new skin and Sakai gadgets (I was >> worried by the clunky drag and drop I had seen when I last looked). >> The experience was good, very familiar and ext-like so I agreed it >> might be ready to use. But then I thought, so how finished is it and >> what is the likelihood of a big change coming along and disrupting >> the UX project in some way by doing something unexpected or >> unwanted, >> or it turning out to have poor performance so we had to pull it back >> out until fixed. The progress chart seemed the obvious place to get >> answers so I went and looked. I found myself with fewer answers >> than I >> expected and thought I should share the experience. >> >> 1. First problem: what component should I be looking at? There seemed >> to be 2 possibilities Layout Customiser and Reorderer. Nico seemed >> pretty confident that he had used the Layout Customiser so that is >> what we looked at, but I noted that the page assumed you understood >> what each component did - a very brief description for disambiguation >> purposes in this case would have been useful. >> >> 2. Next problem was; what does "complete" mean. Until the Flash >> uploader incident, I would probably not have questioned this and >> assumed that "complete" meant feature complete and fully tested for >> heavy production load - i.e. 'production ready'. The Flash uploader >> is >> "complete" but there is a massive risk associated with the Flash >> Player 10 non-functionality that is not mentioned, potentially >> allowing me to make a poor production decision, so perhaps 'complete' >> does not mean 'production ready'. I looked for a definition of >> "complete" but didn't readily find one. >> >> 3. Next problem is the elements on the page (like "columns" or >> "locked"). I wondered what they meant. There seemed to be a >> correlation to the items listed below the colour bar, but all items >> linked to a single specification page that did not easily correlate >> with the names, i.e. even by reading the specification page I could >> not tell the scope of specification that related to the name >> "columns" >> and that was marked as complete. >> >> 4. Finally, there was a white item marked "..." and a corresponding >> item on the bottom of the list. I didn't know what to make of this. I >> assumed it meant the spec scope was unfinished and there was an >> indefinite amount of unknown work still to be done, so progress could >> be 80% done or 5% done and there was no way to know when the >> component >> might be finished. >> >> So for this single example, the entry turned out to be almost totally >> useless for *my* purpose, which was to decide if it was safe to >> consider using the component in a production environment. >> >> I wrote this down to try to be helpful, not to criticise. I >> appreciate >> that it is work in progress and I would like to remind you of the >> good >> news - we are thinking we might be ready to put the component into >> our >> production code and built it into the UX work. I just thought that I >> had an example of the intended use of the page and you should know >> that in its current form it turns out to be less useful than it >> appeared on the surface when I looked at it for the conference call. >> >> Best, John >> >> On 3 Sep 2008, at 21:00, Jess Mitchell wrote: >> >>> I think these look awesome. And I think it's meaningful that I've >>> been pointing people to this page all day while having conversations >>> about components. >>> >>> Wonderful work y'all. >>> >>> Jess >>> >>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >>> Jess Mitchell >>> Project Manager / Fluid Project >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> / w / 617.326.7753 / c / 919.599.5378 >>> jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> http://www.fluidproject.org >>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ fluid-work mailing list [email protected] http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
