[schooltool-dev] SchoolTool CanDo UI Framework

[Tom Hoffman]

Hi all,

I've begun thinking in earnest about the UI reorganization we hope to
push through at PyCon.  In particular I spent some time yesterday with
CanDo.  I think we can simplify the CanDo UI a bit.  Right now it
seems to use more redundancy than is necessary or desirable,
particularly if the system was also supporting SchoolTool functions
like attendance.  Basically, at times it seems like there are four
different ways I could click on "competencies" on a given page.  This
has the benefit of making it hard to miss, but I think we can tone it
down.  Also, it can be a little confusing because some of these may be
seeming to do the same thing while taking me to subtly different
places.  Regardless, what I'm going to propose is very similar to what
CanDo has now.

I'm proposing to move to a standard double row of tabs for SchoolTool.
 Rather than mocking something up, I'm attaching a screenshot of the
WordPress admin screen, which works on the same principle.  This is a
very common pattern.  I'm not saying WP's execution is perfect, but it
is probably better than something I'd mock up at this point.

Things that will go away:

* breadcrumbs
* standard menus -- We shouldn't need the navigation menu, and actions
in the actions menu should be moved to buttons or other controls in
the main frame or as tabs.  Note that in the WP example, several
things we'd have as actions ("Add link") are tabs.

New things:

* top level tab bar: These will more or less map to components in
SchoolTool, although the aim should be an organization that makes
sense to users, not mapping the internal structures of the
application.  So "calendar" and "gradebooks" would be top level tabs.
Probably "cando" is a tab, but that's open for discussion.  There
would probably also be standard tabs for "dashboard," "admin," (if the
user has admin permission), and "users & groups."  At this point, I
don't think we want to worry about any kind of smart context switching
between tabs.  For example, if I'm looking at Section A's gradebook,
and I click on "attendance," I don't get sent to Section A's
attendance by default.  I just get the standard starting point for
attendance.  This is just to keep things reasonably simple.

* second level tab bar: I don't think we can dictate a standard way of
using these tabs; it should be left up to the individual component to
use them however makes sense, if at all.  For example, in a gradebook
it might make the most sense for the tabs to correspond to sections.
In a calendar, they might correspond to day/week/month/etc.

OK, that's probably enough for starters... thoughts?

--Tom
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