[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Sugar Journal - Erase confirmation

[Gary Martin]

On 21 Sep 2010, at 23:56, forster at ozonline.com.au wrote:

>> Agreed. I think the expectation there was that a confirmation dialog would
>> appear in a strip beneath the toolbar, with "Cancel" and "Erase" buttons.
>> 
>> I also agree with Walter regarding the need for multiple selection support;
>> we had some nice mockups with checkboxes that enabled single-click (without
>> modifier) selection of sets of objects to take action on.
> 
> Increasing the workload in deleting can make it more risky. Back in the bad days before resume by default I have lost work while deleting journal spam. The greater the level of tedium, the less the level of care. Its easy to delete the wrong item, the journal reorders itself while you are hovering on an item and waiting for a menu. A confirm button won't help there, you don't notice the changed selection.
> 
> Multiple selection reduces the tedium, confirmation then makes more sense.

+1 for a confirmation once we have a multiple selection mechanism! 

> An alternative to confirmation would be to implement some sort of trash bin, has that been considered? It could even be semi-hidden in control panel and auto emptying.
> 
> I presume checkboxes means one at a time selection. Has selection of consecutive items, either by mouse swipe or by start and end selection, been considered?

My past votes have been towards a start/end selection, and/or a toggle selection mechanism (equivalent of Mac shift key start/end, and individual selection while holding the command key). My worry with check boxes is that it is always visible, cluttering the Journal display for what I'd consider an advanced user function, and very introduces a UI modality that needs some explicit way for being un-set once started. The 'give everything a checkbox approach' also strikes me as the bad old way of HTML email clients before reasonable JavaScript support that had no better design option at the time.

OT: For touch only UIs there seems no standard support for multi selection of items in a list. Check boxes may be more explicit in these cases, though some kind of tap and hold, and or tap hold and drag could also cover similar needs. For the iPad the design is to add a top level 'Edit' button as part of the list view, and when touched a new edit modality is entered where all list entries then gain a new button for one tap easy deletion (and often also a drag reorder widget) — tapping edit again reverts to the usual (safe) list view behaviour.  

> The primary use cases for multiple selection are delete and copy to/from usb.

Yep, and perhaps also the share with friend case.

--Gary

> Tony
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