Comments on Grid View Proposal

Last modified by Ecaterina Moraru on 2013/11/13 12:50
  • Guillaume Lerouge
    Guillaume Lerouge, 2009/03/31 17:44

    I like it overall. Here are my remarks:

    • Light grey text is a bit hard to read. It might benefit from being made a bit darker.
    • Warning: columns will vary a lot depending on what the grid is used for. Thus it will not always be possible to know in advance whether an item should align right or left
    • The pagination seems "outside" of the content area, like if it wasn't part of the same interface element
    • We need to provide a way to interact with data in the table from outside the table. It could be located between the top pagination and the top of the grid. Examples:
      • Clicking on a tag only displays items with that tag
      • Clicking on a date displays items from that date range in the grid
    • Grid titles might take 2 lines when they're long
    • Action column -> what does it do? Send the user to inline mode for the document? Given there is already in-place edition, is it necessary?
    • Can data displayed as a link be edited as well?
  • Ecaterina Valica
    Ecaterina Valica, 2009/04/01 14:13

    G: "Warning: columns will vary a lot depending on what the grid is used for. Thus it will not always be possible to know in advance whether an item should align right or left"

    If "Grid titles might take 2 lines when they're long" this means there is a width for the column that makes the split. Same for bigger values that don't fit in a field and wrap to the second row. Having this width and height, even if it's in procents %, we can align the text in an appropiate manner "text-align: left | right" and "vertical-align: top" 

    Each column has a type: none, list, text, hidden. I propose to have separate the text type in two:
    - characters: align-left
    Grids that will contain predominant characters will describe documents, projects, people, etc

    - numbers: align-right
    Grids that will contain predominant numbers will describe statistical data, prices, etc

    When we talk about numbers is very important that we can scan them rapidly. Having:
    124125
    244
    12,12
    5266
    322,23

    will not help much because they are not aligned like:
     123
      67
       8

  • Ecaterina Valica
    Ecaterina Valica, 2009/04/01 15:49

    G: "Action column -> what does it do? Send the user to inline mode for the document? Given there is already in-place edition, is it necessary?"

    the Action column was an example. It is also present in
    http://intranet.xwikisas.com/xwiki/bin/view/CRM/ContactsGrid
    http://intranet.xwikisas.com/xwiki/bin/view/HolidayRequest/

    What types of actions I have?
    Per row:
    - view entry (inconsistent):
           - http://intranet.xwikisas.com/xwiki/bin/view/CRM/ContactsGrid
             clicking the link in the first column or "View" in an "Action" column -> takes to the same page

           - http://intranet.xwikisas.com/xwiki/bin/view/HolidayRequest/
             clicking the link in the first column (User Page); "View" in an "Action" column (Request Page)

    Per field:
    - edit field - throught the pop-up

    The idea is that an "Action" column could be usefull if I want to have a Grid where I can delete the entry, not just view and edit. This behavior could also be done with a checkbox in front of the row (just like in Gmail) and have Actions up (delete, edit, view)

  • Ecaterina Valica
    Ecaterina Valica, 2009/04/01 16:03

    G: "Can data displayed as a link be edited as well?"

    The current behavior can't make a field be a link and also edited:
        "first_name" : { "type" : "text" , "size" : 10, "link" : "view"},
        "telephone" : { "type" : "text" , "size" : 10, "link" : "none"}

    The "link" can be "view", "field", "auto", "editor". 

    To let a field be edited through a popup and also access the link we should:
    - replace the clicking space from all the field space
    - edit action when the user presses only the "edit" icon (which can be difficult because of the dimension 16x16)
    - view action when the user presses the linked object, eq. "Eduard" 

  • Guillaume Lerouge
    Guillaume Lerouge, 2009/04/01 17:28
    • Putting all test fields as align-left and all number fields as align-right sounds good to me.
    • We need to fix the inconsistency -> when displaying a document, some of the document data is likely to change while some other will change less often.
      • For instance, in the case of a user, his first name and last name will not often change while his job description might change. Thus first & last name should be links towards the document while job description should be editable.
      • This means that we can avoid having a "view" action in the action column
      • It also means that cells that are links do not have to be editable (which matches current behavior)
    • The checkbox idea is interesting for bulk actions (I already thought about it when we were working on XWiki Watch) but it might be complex to implement in the current Grid implementation.
      • Providing a "delete" link in the action column is enough for now