[seek-dev] Query Builder Code Review

Rod Spears rods at ku.edu
Thu Aug 19 12:26:19 PDT 2004


Here is why I would rather not put in a checkbox in in the upper pane 
and and remove the checkbox from the lower pane:

The design of the UI is that the upper pane is used for informational 
purposes (except with the Adv pane where you can use it to construct 
"joins", and this has a lot to do with it being the easiest way to 
represent and create a join).

The bottom pane is where the user manipulates all the of the UI for 
display and conditions. It also enables the user to quickly see what 
fields are going to be displayed and/or have conditions. It acts like an 
"overview", and the worst case is they may have to scroll depending on 
how big the window is and how many fields have been added to the query.

The Std upper pane has tabs which means only one table is showing at a 
time and it hides all the rest.

If the checkboxes were removed from the lower pane and placed in the 
upper pane then there would be no quick and easy way to see "all" the 
fields that are to be displayed. In other words, information /*and* /UI 
would be hidden.

They would have to click on each of the tabs to see what fields have 
been marked as "displayed", and some of the table schemas may have even 
been removed from the tab control via the "checkbox control panel" on 
the right. Making it even harder to determine what is to be displayed.

It might make sense to enable the user to double-click on a field in the 
upper pane tab to have it toggle the display attribute. If we start 
putting UI in the upper pane it starts to break down the design of the 
UI where all manipulation for display and conditions happens in the 
lower pane. Other words, the user thinks: "Oh, I manipulate 'display' in 
the upper pane, but the 'conditions' in the lower pane."

An alternative would be to remove the entire lower pane in the Std view 
and then add a "display" and a "conditions" columns in the tabs in the 
upper pane and have all the UI manipulated there. Then the radio btns 
would be at the bottom of the window. But again this does not provide an 
overview.

Rod

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