[dev] User interface options question

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Kevin Myer <kevin_myer at iu13.org>:

> Quoting Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at mail.curecanti.org>:
>
>> What if user selects no sidebar and doesn't want a link to ingo in the
>> menubar?  Then there is no way to access the filters (and I personally
>> don't think an answer of "Then the admin has to enable the filters link
>> on the menubar" is a valid response).  Additionally, what about all the
>> users (and i've seen this) that go to the filters preference to change
>> their filter rules because that is where they changed their filter
>> rules in IMP 3.x?
>
> So you're saying that if you install a tier 1 module (IMP) and you purposely
> hide the sidebar and refuse to put a link in IMP's application menu, that
> accesing another tier 1 module (Ingo) through the options menu provides for a
> more consistent user interface and is more reasonable than having an 
> admin add
> it to menu.php?  You can't have your filter (er, message rule) and eat it too
> ;)

I'm not saying it's more reasonable (since it's not) but I am saying 
that there could be a variety of reasons why you don't want another 
icon crowding up the toolbar.  Especially in an large enterprise 
environment, you can't be sure everyone is running screens at 1024x768 
so adding even 1 or 2 icons can cause the menu bar to look absolutely 
terrible.  Or it may simply be something that you access so 
infrequently that it doesn't make sense to put it up there.

> I was actually referring to a situation where you'd administratively lock the
> preference to not display the sidebar.  If a user chooses not to display the
> sidebar, thats another story, and then how do they get to other modules you
> have installed?  Make options for them too?

Understand that my experience comes from working at a large university 
(or, I should say, used to work) that only used IMP (and related filter 
and password modules).  There was no sidebar at the time IMP was first 
implemented, and with the small amount of modules available to the user 
it is entirely foreseable that an admin doesn't want to enable the 
sidebar for complexity/load/user questions/etc. sake.  The last thing 
you want to do on a campus of 30,000+ people is start giving them more 
than 3 options - I can't tell you the exponential way user support 
calls escalate when they are given additional stuff to click on their 
screen. :)

Maybe I'm in the minority view, but you can't discount the number of 
people that run IMP only.  No sidebar, no horde, no nothing else, just 
imp (I'm including ingo as part of IMP since, historically, it used to 
be).  And you can't discount the number of people/installations (and 
the number of people at those installations) that have upgraded, or are 
planning to upgrade, to IMP 4.x.  Once again, in my experience in a 
large university environment, you are risking confusion to many, many 
people if this sort of stuff just disappears.  So there needs to be a 
way to access ingo if no sidebar exists and without forcing the admin 
to add a menu item even though they don't want to.  So that's why I 
still think the links in the preference screen is a viable item.

And i should add that, especially with the previous paragraph, that 
these concerns are really only relevant to IMP (and to a lesser degree, 
Turba) -  This is simply becuase there are so many IMP/Turba 
installations out there as compared to what I would call "Horde" 
installations (e.g. a more complete suite of installed modules).  So 
while it may make some sense in respect to Horde conventions, these UI 
decisions do *not* make sense when you look at actual installed 
user-base.  Or at least that's my opinion.

michael

_______________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at curecanti.org]