New Version of Browse Recent Page
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After a couple iterations of feedback, I have a new version of the browse recent page that is ready for review.
After getting feedback from several people about the last version of the browse recent page (See my last blog entry), I have revised it and I have another version ready to for people to comment on.You can find it at: yoda:9080/content/browse_latest (adding cnx.rice.edu where appropriate)
EDIT: Sorry, I mistyped the page template name... it should now work.
The Main changes are:
- No more tooltips - Manpreet pointed out that the tooltips covered up too much of the text on the page and made it hard to read (as other people had complained about as well). One suggested solution was to put the tooltips at a fixed location on the right side of the page, but this was a little too hard to understand (thanks for the suggestion, though, Jenn and Max!)
- The created date was removed from the table. We decided that this wasn't information that needed to be included in this table, and the dates aren't all correct, anyway.
- The publisher was moved from the tooltips to the table. You can now sort by publisher as well.
- The publishing message was removed. It can be found by clicking through the versions link to the content_info page.
- You can now sort by title
- The table headers give an indication of which sorting option is currently selected.
- The portlets were removed from the right hand side because one of them links to the same page anyway, and the other can be arrived at by clicking on the browse navigation box.
The one change that I would like to make, but will probably not at this time:
- Move the browse navigation box on the right side of the screen to the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.
Re: New Version of Browse Recent Page
Posted by
jenn
at
2006-06-12 17:32
I'm confused by the ability to sort by all these columns; I thought the point of the page was specifically to display content in order of last revision. What's the use case for sorting this page by title? If it's curiosity about a particular module, and that module starts with M, it's going to take about twenty clicks to browse down that far in the list, and this isn't a speedy page to load.
I also don't know who's out there besides us who'll understand what the third column is. Maybe if we called it "revisions" or something.
Looking at Max's comments, it still doesn't look to me like we've decided why we're doing this and what it should include!
I also don't know who's out there besides us who'll understand what the third column is. Maybe if we called it "revisions" or something.
Looking at Max's comments, it still doesn't look to me like we've decided why we're doing this and what it should include!
Re: Re: New Version of Browse Recent Page
Posted by
maxwell
at
2006-06-14 19:43
I agree with Jenn about the sort-by-title being kind of pointless (especially since we provide that elsewhere), but I don't know that it hurts things either (unless somebody think it's a distraction from what the table is meant to be).
I can't support "Revisions" because it's a whole letter longer than "Versions" :-) unless you were to change it "Revs.", but that would probably just be more confusing.
As for your comments about my comments, I learned later from talking to Manpreet that things like the new column for submitter name and the elimination of the "Created" column came out of a meeting between her and Kyle in which she made suggestions based on what he told her this listing was for, namely a place for Charlet and Chuck to check out the new content. In my first blog entry about this listing, however, we already determined that Charlet's (and probaly Chuck's) needs were too great for a clean web-based listing, and that they already have ways of getting this information which seem to suit them rather well. I imagine they will continue to use their own methods despite the creation of a web-based listing.
Kyle should have mentioned that meeting in this blog entry and/or Manpreet should have been commenting on the blogs all along. Otherwise, this fishbowl thing doesn't work very well.
I can't support "Revisions" because it's a whole letter longer than "Versions" :-) unless you were to change it "Revs.", but that would probably just be more confusing.
As for your comments about my comments, I learned later from talking to Manpreet that things like the new column for submitter name and the elimination of the "Created" column came out of a meeting between her and Kyle in which she made suggestions based on what he told her this listing was for, namely a place for Charlet and Chuck to check out the new content. In my first blog entry about this listing, however, we already determined that Charlet's (and probaly Chuck's) needs were too great for a clean web-based listing, and that they already have ways of getting this information which seem to suit them rather well. I imagine they will continue to use their own methods despite the creation of a web-based listing.
Kyle should have mentioned that meeting in this blog entry and/or Manpreet should have been commenting on the blogs all along. Otherwise, this fishbowl thing doesn't work very well.
Re: Re: New Version of Browse Recent Page
Posted by
kclarks
at
2006-06-15 15:35
Well, I think Manpreet wanted the ability to sort by title not because its convinient or useful, but because it is consistent with the rest of the page. It might confuse people as to why they can sort by 3 of the 4 columns but not title. Obviously, it isn't the most ideal way to be sorting content by title, but it does work.
Also, this page will be a bit quicker on the live system. The system that is is currently running on is just my dev box that is running 4 seperate Zope instances. It will be much quicker once it goes live.
Personally, I think "Versions" is much more clear than "Revisions". To me, "Revsions" means that number of times a module/course has been REpublished, and "Versions" means the number of time a module/course was published. So, a new module would have versions=1 and revisions=0. I don't think "Versions" is hard to understand, but I could be convinced to change it.
Also, this page will be a bit quicker on the live system. The system that is is currently running on is just my dev box that is running 4 seperate Zope instances. It will be much quicker once it goes live.
Personally, I think "Versions" is much more clear than "Revisions". To me, "Revsions" means that number of times a module/course has been REpublished, and "Versions" means the number of time a module/course was published. So, a new module would have versions=1 and revisions=0. I don't think "Versions" is hard to understand, but I could be convinced to change it.
Re: New Version of Browse Recent Page
Posted by
manpreet
at
2006-06-20 21:02
A few points regarding the comments above:
1) Kyle and I arrived at the columns to be displayed based on our discussions on who would be using the page and what would they like to see. Since we do not have any actual user data yet - the columns were chosen to display a snapshot of the recently published content with information that a "common user" might wish to see. Ofcourse - this was based purely on an hypothesis of what the common user might be there for.
2) Kyle is correct - i asked for the table to be sorted by the title column to be consistent since the other columns could be sorted.
3) IMO versions is better than revisions, though I agree that it does not clearly convey what that column is all about - so if anybody has better ideas it will be great.
4) Max - I agree with you on the style issues. I hope you can fix them.
1) Kyle and I arrived at the columns to be displayed based on our discussions on who would be using the page and what would they like to see. Since we do not have any actual user data yet - the columns were chosen to display a snapshot of the recently published content with information that a "common user" might wish to see. Ofcourse - this was based purely on an hypothesis of what the common user might be there for.
2) Kyle is correct - i asked for the table to be sorted by the title column to be consistent since the other columns could be sorted.
3) IMO versions is better than revisions, though I agree that it does not clearly convey what that column is all about - so if anybody has better ideas it will be great.
4) Max - I agree with you on the style issues. I hope you can fix them.
To me it's much more interesting to see what entirely new content is being added to the repository than to see whether so-and-so has made a typo fix or added an exercise. It is also apparently important enough for all of us that we set aside time at each of the weekly meetings to discuss it (yes, we also discuss revisions, but who really gets excited about those?). I know what you're saying right now. "Max, you can still see this information if you look at which content only has one version." To that I respond that a) yes, but only while new content is not revised, and b) that I think juxtaposing a "Published" column with a "Created" column made it much more clear what we mean by "publishing" (especially to non-authors who view this listing). I would much rather have a "Created" column than the "Published by" column.
So aside from that, there are a few style issues. One: I don't like the column headers underlining on hover (it looks bad underlining so close to the table border). Two: the spaces before and after the column headers need to be removed (especially on the "Versions" and "Published" columns). I imagine this latter problem has something to do with the arrows being used, but they still need to be removed wherever possible.
The "creation date" is wrong for all of our modules, as far as I can tell. The creation date is the date that someone first created the module in their workgroup and started working on it. It currently has nothing to do with when the module was first published, rather when someone started working on it, which shouldn't be displayed to outside users. Until we get the "original publication date" indexed in the database (or fix the creation date to reflect this), I would have to wake up every version of every module and check to see what the first version was and what its publication date was. This would drastically increase the time it takes for this page to load.
The other problem with putting it on a "browse" page is that it doesn't follow the conventions of the rest of our browse pages. In general, at least with our existing model, we try only to display information that is relevant to the most recent version of the module. Ross has argued before that this sort of "historical information" should be available through an advanced search interface (that he needs to write) and not through browse pages. I am inclined to agree with him now.
While yes, I think this information is important, this isn't the correct page for it. It should be on available through a different part of the site which allows access to old content and more historical publication information. If we had correct data available, I would probably still support throwing it in for the time being, but not now while our "creation date" data is all wrong.
Yes, some style issues still need to be worked out. I was going to ask you to look into those after the actual feature set that we are including has been finalized. I included the spaces before and after the name because that is the standard that happens on other sortable tables in our site. (See workgroup_contents) When the header is clicked, an arrow appears which shows which heading is being used to sort the contents and which direction it goes. But, in order to make sure that the title is still centered, a blank arrow is added to the other side. Also, there are extra arrows blank arrows on the other titles so that the table doesn't change size when it is clicked. This seems to be the standard that we use other places in the site. Correct me if I'm wrong. I can change it even if it is, but I tend to think that we should keep it as consistent as possible.