[schooltool-dev] Re: [Cando] Re: new CanDo 07 UI mockups...

[Paul Carduner]

On 7/10/07, Jason Straw <lists at misato.us> wrote:
> Tom Hoffman wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 7/9/07, *Jason Straw* <lists at misato.us <mailto:lists at misato.us>>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >     I have a fairly major problem with this.  It doesn't work at all
> >     in the
> >     confines of the SchoolTool look and feel, so if someone decides to use
> >     SchoolTool and CanDo they cannot do so easily.
> >
> >     I am ccing schooltool-dev as well.
> >
> >     Everything you can do in SchoolTool needs to be accessible in whatever
> >     you do for CanDo, and the UI changes should be ones that can be
> >     mirrored
> >     by SchoolTool so that the look and feel is the same for someone
> >     switching back and forth.
> >
> >
> > I'm just confused at this point...  we did write a lot of code last
> > year to change to a tab based UI, it just didn't get finished and
> > merged.  POV actually did a fair amount of work on it after the
> > sprint.  Beyond that, I don't think anyone had any serious
> > objections.  The only thing that was controversial at all was the
> > "temporary tabs" which might have been an unnecessarily complexity.
>
> I really would like dwelsh and jelkner to go through that branch before
> implementing this new stuff.  If that does most of what they want.. they
> should get it merged rather then reinventing the wheel.

I agree.  You should really look at that branch and see what it's all
about before moving on.

> >
> >     I am also concerned about a Gutsy or Gutsy+1 release for CanDo with a
> >     wildly divergent UI from it's parent product.
> >
> >
> > We do need to wildly diverge at some point, because the overall
> > navigation is still very weak.
> As a group we need to move from where we are, I agree we need to fix
> navigation, but not that CanDo and SchoolTool need divergent navigation.
>
> I want to hear from Paul Carduner on this, cause I would like to see his
> views on this (and he's just seeing these mockups now...

After talking with Stephan, the mock up seems OK to me.  I like the
idea of asking the user straight forward questions to help them get to
where they are going.  What I am still wondering about is how the tabs
will work, and whether we can reuse the tabbing system that we wrote
last year.   Besides the tabbing, I think the navigation you are
proposing is different enough from what we designed last year that you
might not be remaking the wheel (maybe reinventing it though).  So,
I'd like to see the code from last year get merged at some point, or
be confirmed as being usable.  It would be really bad if all that was
a waste.  That said, we can go on in this endeavor so long as there is
something to look at (in trunk no less) at the end of the sprint - and
make a commitment to not forget about the code we already wrote -
which I believe is sufficiently high quality.  Maybe that should be a
goal for the summer - integrating that code from last year.

- Paul