schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Justas <justas@xxxxxx>]

Hey,

On 04/11/2011 08:16 AM, Alan Elkner wrote:
> Hey Guys,
>
> In my latest commit to my section term linkage branch,
> lp:~aelkner/schooltool/term_linkage, I created the 'All Terms' view
> that has a complete overview of the section for the whole schoolyear
> as described in the functional test, section_linkage.txt:
<...>
> I've attached a screenshot of an example which demonstrates the
> statements above.  Though I mention the view for linking to an
> existing section, I haven't created that one yet.  I'll be adding that
> in an upcoming commit.
>
> I added CSS classes to schooltool.css that make the table follow the
> guidelines laid out on page 27 of the Ubuntu style guide.  That
> includes the dotted line as border-bottom of table cells.  I chose
> 220px as column width rather than 140px because it seemed too narrow,
> and people will rarely use more than four terms.
  Umm.. why 220px?  Just couldn't figure out the reasoning behind this 
number.

  Page 26 also says "Table width: 100%. Table should use the whole 
width of the content area."  This of course works pretty well when your 
content area is 544px (as in the guidelines), and may look quirky when 
it is whole page width, like we have now.  So no objections, just curious.


> The content-header slot at the top has a table with course and year,
> with links to each.  I used border-right of 40px rather than cramming
> them together with only a tightly squeezed-in vertical bar to separate
> them.  Since each term's section roster is proceeded by a title link,
> the user can easily navigate to the section for the desired term.  The
> only question is whether the term title in the table headings should
> be links to the terms as well.
>
> Anyway, I also attached a screenshot of the changed section index.html
> view which now has a table at the top describing the section, then an
> All Terms link to get to the section linkage view, followed by a list
> of links for the sections in the the other terms that the section is
> linked to.  The links are listed with the text being the term's title,
> but clicking the link takes the user to the section.  Perhaps the link
> should say 'Math (1) of Third' instead of just 'Third'.  I can't
> decide which would be best.  What makes me want to change the text is
> that there is a link to the section's term view that has the term's
> title right above the All Terms link.  That could be confusing.
>
> Please make any comments or suggestions, and any code review prior to
> our meeting would help me make any adjustments this week.

  In SectionLinkageView, please remove everything except year 
property.  Most of it should be done in tal.

  Instead of terms property, you could use something like this:

  @property
  def columns(self):
     linked_sections = dict([(ITerm(section), section) for section in 
self.linked_sections])
     columns = []
     for for term in sorted(self.year.values(), key=lambda t: t.first):
        columns.append({
            'term': term,
            'section': linked_sections.get(term),
            })
     return columns

 Then use tal:repeat="column view/term_columns", 
tal:condition="column/section", tal:condition="repeat/column/last", <a 
tal:attributes="href 
string:${column/section/@@absolute_url}/extend_term.html?term=${column/term/__name__}">Extend 
to smth</a> and so on.

  If you really need to limit "extend section" functionality to later 
terms, you can add bool 'allow_extend' to the column dict.  Frankly, 
this limitation bothers me.  Though it is properly guiding user towards 
what he should do, it backfires weirdly in some scenarios.

  Say, we have Math in term1 and term2, not linked.  It is possible to 
link them if you navigate to All Terms view from section in term 1, it 
is not possible to link them if you navigate to the *same view* from 
term 2.  Hmm.. I wonder how it works with linking sections in term1 and 
term3.

  As a compromise, maybe we could have "link existing section" in all 
unlinked terms, and "extend to term" only in terms after the last linked 
one?  Get the best of both worlds - soft hint what user should do + 
possibility to fix mistakes.



  I'd also like if ExtendTermView had a confirmation button.  In my 
experience, links that create content without confirmation bite users 
hard (in javascripty implementations you usually have to use at least 
two mouse clicks, see assigning a developer to a bug in Launchpad).

Cheers,
Justas