Re: Ideas about in-place editing with datamanager

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Hi,

- --Henri Bergius wrote on 2006-01-03 09:13:
> Edit-in-place for midcom.helper.datamanager

A few thoughts, already given in IRC, but I want to document them here.

1st of all, I don't see AJAX as the golden egg of web usability. AJAX is a fine
thing if applied in well controlled doses where it makes sense. But generally
doing all edits with ajax is something I very strongly discourage. While AJAX is
(currently) certainly a Hype, it has to be seen if it establishes itself.

Right now, the only AJAX interface I find intuitive is the search dropdown of
Google.

All AJAXes I have seen in MidCOM are poor when it comes down to user experience,
all of them constantly left me wondering "what can I do here", "which piece of
(not emphaised) text do I have to click to uncover another easter egg" etc. Even
the contact chooser, while in itself a good thing(tm), made me looking at it
quirkily, as it failed now and then (bugs hopefully fixed nowadays) and was very
 slow. (Besides missing, easily visible cues in the UI).

To quote Jason Fried [1] (also referenced on [2]):

> However, let's proceed with caution. What we're talking about is technology, not
> the user experience. Ajax-based apps certainly have the potential to produce a
> better user experience, but good experiences never come by default. Good
> experiences aren't plugged in. Good experiences are crafted by thinking about
> people, not technology.

A simple "transparent" replacement of the DM which just makes an entire DM view
(which I haven't seen much on regular live sites anyway) is the very last thing
I personally see as a good user experience. It is certainly an impressive piece
of technology, but the *tech* isn't the main problem we should be concerned.

Also, what often confuses me is the fact that AJAX updates information without
visual feedback (except perhaps dropping the form field again). In the classic
world you always get a feedback on successful data writes. But without any
messages / page reloads / etc. it is just a point of asking yourself "Did this
really change?"

To sum up: I strongly suggest to use AJAX to *enrich* existing user interfaces,
not *replace* them. Stuff like the BLOB (sub)types can be greatly improved by AJAX.


Other, more technical considerations:

* The implementation proposal breaks DMs event handling (component no longer get
  notified of changes). This already makes any notion of "full transparency"
  impossible.

* For a general note: Implementation is a bit on the hacky side; hacking an
  already hacky piece of code is dangerous. This is an old problem of the DM1,
  which is why I decided to deprecate it and started to work on DM2.

* Object locking is now no longer consistent. Either it has to be dropped, or
  a whole new way of locking objects should be introduced. In any way it makes
  it impossible for the user to atomically change several things at once. In-
  flight collisions are always possible (not only theoretically).



Live long and Prosper!
Torben Nehmer

- --
Torben Nehmer, Guenzburg, Bavaria, Germany
http://www.nathan-syntronics.de, mailto:[email protected]
PGP Public Key: https://www.link-m.de/pgp/t.nehmer.asc
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