schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

OK, site redesign is moving along, albeit a little more slowly this
week as we attend to less style and more plumbing.

Design-wise, Douglas turned my attention to one big remaining mess
we've never really dealt with -- return links.  Specifically, getting
you back to an object's "index" page whenever you're doing some
specialized action on it.

If it is a whole-page form, the submit or cancel buttons should take
you back.  If it is a modal dialog, you just dismiss it.  But if it is
a page with no form or embedded forms, there should be a link (not a
button) in a standard place and syntax.

Actually, the only real question is what should the text be.  "Done?"
We've used "OK" in the past but I'm kinda over that.  Thoughts?

In a related point, Douglas and I discussed whether or not, for
example, the full Person sidebar should appear on all person views or
just the main one.  In particular, Douglas raised the point that right
now the Javascript for modals is per-view so it would mean a lot of
repeated code or new plumbing to, say, make the preferences modal come
up in every person page.

I'm sure this could be fixed but it prompted me to more seriously
consider whether the full person sidebar ought to be showing up in all
person views (e.g., edit groups).  We really don't want people
navigating away from specific forms using the sidebar, in particular
when doing so would skip the form submission, and it is a distraction
when they should just be focusing on the form in front of them.

So I'm leaning toward tying the sidebar to specific views much more
closely.  For example, making the current person sidebar only visible
in the person index (singular, aelkner) view.

Thoughts?

--Tom