1 | qPloneTiles |
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2 | |
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3 | #120: Support and use "Tile" links |
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4 | |
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5 | One of the classic, testable usability laws is Fitt's |
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6 | Law, which simply says that the efficiency of a user |
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7 | interface item is directly proportional to its size. |
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8 | Plone currently has a lot of user interface items that |
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9 | could have bigger clickable areas without changing the |
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10 | elements themselves. |
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11 | |
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12 | Proposed by |
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13 | Alexander Limi |
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14 | Proposal type |
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15 | User interface |
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16 | Assigned to release |
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17 | * Plone 3.0 |
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18 | State |
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19 | being-discussed |
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20 | |
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21 | |
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22 | Motivation |
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23 | |
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24 | A lot of the user interface elements in Plone only work when you click the links they define instead of the entire UI |
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25 | element. This is bad UI, although most web-based systems work this way. |
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26 | I have already experimented with changing this for a limited set of items in previous Plone versions; in Plone 2.0 I made |
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27 | the entire item in the navigation tree clickable and it indicates when it is selected with a block of color around itself, |
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28 | so you know you can click (this doesn't work in Internet Explorer because it's a buggy piece of crap, more about that |
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29 | later ;). In Plone 2.1 I made all the portlet items be clickable in the entire area through a display:block definition of |
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30 | the link tag. |
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31 | It's time to take this to the next level. |
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32 | |
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33 | |
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34 | Proposal |
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35 | |
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36 | Because of the limitations (as far as I have found, at least), it's hard to make certain elements entirely clickable |
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37 | through re-defining the link tag only. In a separate project I was involved in, we used a tiny piece of JS to assign |
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38 | clickable behaviour to an arbitrary element, which worked well. |
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39 | (Note that the normal "read more" or whatever link still remains, so it's not removing links for people that have JS |
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40 | turned off or browsing via lynx or similar — this is merely augmenting the link behaviour, not moving it into JS.) |
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41 | This also has the advantage of being able to make any area clickable. My pet peeve is that Plone in "Summary view" |
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42 | doesn't accept clicks anywhere within the area of one of the items listed, but only on the links. The interface would be |
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43 | so much more efficient if we could click anywhere within that item's area. |
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44 | |
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45 | |
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46 | Implementation |
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47 | |
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48 | We should find a good way to define an area as clickable. In the project I was in, we defined that on the tag itself, and |
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49 | did it explicitly, but this can possibly be improved. |
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