[horde] Displaying of variable fields in preferences

[Jens Wahnes]

On Thu, Jan 21 2016, at 14:45:49 +0100, Jan Schneider wrote:

> Zitat von Jens Wahnes <wahnes at uni-koeln.de>:
>> In any event, here's what I noticed: When using the "Undo changes"
>> button, changes to the GUI elements that had been carried out
>> previously (presumably through some Javascript code) are not reverted.
>>
>> How to reproduce:
>>
>> (1) Go to Gearwheel -> Preferences -> Calendar, Notifications
>>
>> (2) In the box labelled "Choose how you want to receive reminders for
>> events with alarms", change from "Inline" to "Email" and notice how the
>> radio buttons for selecting the alarm sound disappear. Instead there is
>> now a line to enter an email address.
>>
>> (3) Now click on "Undo Changes". The selection goes back to "Inline",
>> but the sound selection does not reappear. The email address field is
>> still displayed.

> It's really just a standard form reset button. This resets the form  
> elements to their values specified in the HTML source. It does *not*  
> revert any changes done by JavaScript. I.e. it's a browser feature, not a 
> Horde feature.

I don't think there is any browser out there that does actually track
changes to form elements on the DOM level to revert them if the "reset
form" button is pressed.  Other web applications that use dynamic
changes to forms seem to use workarounds to restore a form to its
original state (instead of relying on the browser's "reset form" to do
the work).  That is, if they provide a way to reset the form at all.
But I don't know if there are any rules/RFCs/best practice documents or
such that define the expected browser behavior a situation where the
form elements have changed and the "reset" button is pressed.

However, what I do know is that from the user's perspective, the
current behavior really creates an inconsistent feel.  What's supposed
to happen if you submit the form mentioned before with settings
"Inline" and an email address entered, anyway?

To "really" reset the form, it would probably require additional
Javascript code from Horde to reset all form elements to the original
state whenever the "reset form" button is pressed.  Another way to do
it would be to have the "Undo Changes" button just link to the current
page's URL (e.g., to
"/services/prefs.php?app=kronolith&group=notification" on the form I
mentioned) because reloading the page would essentially reset the form
to its original state as well.  While I'd expect the first approach to
require quite some amount of additional work with little real benefit,
the second one shouldn't be that hard to implement, AFAICS.

Yet another way to deal with this would be to leave out the "reset
form" buttons completely.  I haven't seen those at all for a while now
in other web applications that use forms with heavy Javascript
interaction (e.g. in Google Apps), so I guess people don't miss
traditional HTML "reset form" buttons a lot.  Applying that design idea
to Horde's preferences pages, one could leave out the "Undo Changes"
button completely and label the button that currently says "Show All
Preferences Groups" with "Cancel" instead.  What's your opinion on that
approach?


Jens
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