[1] | 1 | qPloneTiles |
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| 2 | |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | Inspiration |
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| 5 | |
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| 6 | "#120: Support and use "Tile" links": |
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| 7 | |
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| 8 | One of the classic, testable usability laws is Fitt's |
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| 9 | Law, which simply says that the efficiency of a user |
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| 10 | interface item is directly proportional to its size. |
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| 11 | Plone currently has a lot of user interface items that |
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| 12 | could have bigger clickable areas without changing the |
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| 13 | elements themselves. |
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| 14 | |
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| 15 | Proposed by:: |
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| 16 | Alexander Limi |
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| 17 | Proposal type:: |
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| 18 | User interface |
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| 19 | Assigned to release:: |
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| 20 | Plone 3.0 |
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| 21 | State:: |
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| 22 | being-discussed |
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| 23 | |
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| 24 | Motivation |
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| 25 | |
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| 26 | A lot of the user interface elements in Plone only |
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| 27 | work when you click the links they define instead |
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| 28 | of the entire UI element. This is bad UI, although |
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| 29 | most web-based systems work this way. |
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| 30 | |
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| 31 | I have already experimented with changing this for |
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| 32 | a limited set of items in previous Plone versions; |
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| 33 | in Plone 2.0 I made the entire item in the |
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| 34 | navigation tree clickable and it indicates when it |
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| 35 | is selected with a block of color around itself, |
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| 36 | so you know you can click (this doesn't work in |
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| 37 | Internet Explorer because it's a buggy piece of |
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| 38 | crap, more about that later ;). In Plone 2.1 I made |
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| 39 | all the portlet items be clickable in the entire |
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| 40 | area through a display:block definition of the link |
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| 41 | tag. |
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| 42 | It's time to take this to the next level. |
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| 43 | |
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| 44 | |
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| 45 | Proposal |
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| 46 | |
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| 47 | Because of the limitations (as far as I have found, |
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| 48 | at least), it's hard to make certain elements |
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| 49 | entirely clickable through re-defining the link tag |
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| 50 | only. In a separate project I was involved in, we |
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| 51 | used a tiny piece of JS to assign clickable behaviour |
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| 52 | to an arbitrary element, which worked well. |
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| 53 | (Note that the normal "read more" or whatever link |
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| 54 | still remains, so it's not removing links for people |
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| 55 | that have JS turned off or browsing via lynx or |
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| 56 | similar — this is merely augmenting the link behaviour, |
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| 57 | not moving it into JS.) |
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| 58 | This also has the advantage of being able to make any |
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| 59 | area clickable. My pet peeve is that Plone in "Summary |
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| 60 | view" doesn't accept clicks anywhere within the area |
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| 61 | of one of the items listed, but only on the links. The |
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| 62 | interface would be so much more efficient if we could |
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| 63 | click anywhere within that item's area. |
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| 64 | |
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| 65 | |
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| 66 | Implementation |
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| 67 | |
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| 68 | We should find a good way to define an area as clickable. |
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| 69 | In the project I was in, we defined that on the tag |
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| 70 | itself, and did it explicitly, but this can possibly be |
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| 71 | improved. |
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