Juha Lindfors <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 16:07 24.5.2000 +0200, you wrote:
>>Hi!
>>
>>Dan OConnor wrote:
>>> I think that making a plugin that can edit both ejb-jar and jboss.xml
>>> is a step in the right direction, in terms of usability. However, this
>>> process would probably continue every time we added a new set
>>> of functionality, e.g. o/r mapping info goes in its own xml file and
>>> the user wants to edit/view it with the jboss info and the
>>> deployment descriptor info... If we make a combined plugin every
>>> time, pretty soon there's no point in plugins and we have a
>>> monolithic configuration application that we need to maintain.
>>>
>>> I'd like to suggest a document/view architecture where you can
>>> dynamically add views (corresponding to plugins) at runtime. Each
>>> view/plugin could be represented by a tab on the window, for
>>> example.
>>>
>>> Say you're working with a particular EJB jar. When you open it up,
>>> you get the generic deployment descriptor view that you get now
>>> with the EJB 1.1 setting. You could choose to dynamically add
>>> tabs with new views on the EJB jar, such as an object/relational
>>> mapping view, a "basic" JBoss-specific settings view, an
>>> "advanced" JBoss-specific settings view, a JMS view, etc.
>>
>>Yes, this makes sense. Only have to figure out how to do this in a good
>>UI way.
>
>Well, I'd say don't use tabbed pane stuff. Use a tree thingy on your left
>and the sheets on your right. Tabs work ok when you just have 2 or 3 sheets
>but start to fall apart whenever you get bigger than that.
I like what Rickard has done for jboss descriptor editing in the new
build of EJX that comes with jBoss2.0.
He is using tabs at the top of the overall window for different
subtasks:
Container configurations
Resource managers
Enterprise beans
Application settings
Where necessary, the pane under the tab is divided into a tree view and
a (possibly tabbed) pane. The tree is more focused than it used to be -
it doesn't have to mix content of different kinds.
Looking at an entity bean in the Enterprise beans view, it is now a root
node in the tree view, and has no subnodes. (Is that just because I have
a trivial bean?)
It has six tabs in the right-hand pane, though:
Entity
Environment entries
CMP fields
EJB references
Resource references
Security role references
On my Win98 machine, at the default 700x700 window size, these stack up
in two rows. But if I maximise the window (1024x768), they are all on
one row.
I'm quite happy with one row, but not happy to lose the whole screen to
a simple config tool. There may be other stuff I need to read in order
to make the settings.
Less happy with two: if the tabs are supposed to run in a natural order,
you have to learn not to read from top to bottom, because the top row is
the "back" row and its tabs come after those in the bottom - "front" -
row. The visual cueing of front-back ordering is too weak to overcome my
tendency to read top-to-bottom.
I *really* don't like the way Windows (unlike Swing's Metal L&F)
rearranges rows when you select tabs, but the way Swing does it breaks
the visual metaphor by losing the connection between a tab and its pane
when the tab isn't in the front row. So I agree that tabs should be used
sparingly, fitting on one row.
Moving the tabs to subnodes of the bean (your suggestion) would be good.
There would be a possibility of using subnodes for categories, each
having up to three tabs, but I don't think it applies to this example.
--
Justin Forder
