Ideas for a new interface design

[Nick Hall-6]

I was recently thinking about improvements we could make to the current
user interface.

It needs to be both powerful and yet simple and intuitive for "Aunt
Martha" to use.  Whilst using Nautilus, which has such an interface, I
thought that it would be applicable, with a few modifications, for gramps.

I have put together a few images to illustrate some ideas and uploaded
them to http://www.gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=1644

Hopefully this will help others expand upon these ideas.

Regards,

Nick.


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[Duncan Lithgow-5]

I'll expand on my thoughts later, but my main idea recently has been
that we need to seperate and prioritize the concepts of navigation and
editing. They are quite mixed up at the moment.

But now it's bed time...

Duncan

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[Nick Hall-6]

There has been some feedback on this, so I thought it would be good to
summarize the main ideas.

1) One of the most useful features that has been suggested is allowing
multiple objects in a workspace. This may be gramplets alongside a view
or two views together. In my opinion we should plan for this when we
design the navigation bar even if we don't want to implement it for the
next release. I think that we should think in terms of workspaces
instead of views.

2) The other feature that I think would be very powerful is the
multi-function aspect of the navigation bar. I would certainly find it
useful to launch detached gramplets directly from the navigation bar - I
don't use them enough at the moment. Perhaps we could make the
navigation modes plugins? This would lead to a flexible interface and
make future expansion easier. There have been a couple of good
suggestions for navigation modes involving filters and searches that I
hadn't thought about.

3) Tabs. Do we want them or not? I put them in the design because they
are a common and intuitive interface and I'm sure people use them at the
moment. We could use them as a method of switching between workspaces.
We could have only one workspace by default and leave multiple
workspaces an advanced feature - I don't know where we want to go here.

I have been using gramps for less than a year so I am not in a position
to suggest the best solution, but I thought it would be helpful for me
to put forward some ideas.

Feel free to make more comments and suggestions.

Regards,

Nick.

Nick Hall wrote:

> I was recently thinking about improvements we could make to the current
> user interface.
>
> It needs to be both powerful and yet simple and intuitive for "Aunt
> Martha" to use.  Whilst using Nautilus, which has such an interface, I
> thought that it would be applicable, with a few modifications, for gramps.
>
> I have put together a few images to illustrate some ideas and uploaded
> them to http://www.gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=1644
>
> Hopefully this will help others expand upon these ideas.
>
> Regards,
>
> Nick.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
> is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
> developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
> ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel
>
>
>  

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[Doug Blank-2]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Nick Hall <nick__hall@...> wrote:
> There has been some feedback on this, so I thought it would be good to
> summarize the main ideas.

Nick,

This discussion has been very useful, and productive, so thanks for
that. Also, you are at a perfect stage to be able to still remember
your initial first-reactions to the UI and how may have met your
expectations, or not. Some further thoughts on your summary below.

> 1) One of the most useful features that has been suggested is allowing
> multiple objects in a workspace. This may be gramplets alongside a view
> or two views together. In my opinion we should plan for this when we
> design the navigation bar even if we don't want to implement it for the
> next release. I think that we should think in terms of workspaces
> instead of views.

I think the key idea here is that we want to give people the power to
re-use gramps components in their own ways, but give them an easy to
understand foundation for doing it. I think this refinement will
tie-up a lot of loose ends, and maybe make the interface more
consistent. Here are some possibilities along these lines:

- People Views: this is a category (from the left-hand pane) of all of
the people lists, one per tab. One can create additional tabbed
people-views, name them, and have a filter or search criteria
associated with it. I can imagine having a few tabbed workspaces into
my family: "Everyone", "My Family", "Spouse's Family", "Current
Research", etc.

- Event, Family, Media, Note, Place, Repo, Source Views: these all
have a category entry on left, and tabbed workspaces.

- Each workspace can have a gramplet attachment area (side or
bottom?). If the gramplet is sensitive to a changed-active signal, it
will be to this view.

- This could do away with the "detached gramplet" idea. They would
always be attached to some view.

- Perhaps we can use this to clean up the two different methods of
search/filter. Side Filters work one way, and the top-search works a
different way. Let's get rid of the top search and make them work the
same way. I'd rather have a general "Search:" that will search all of
the data in a view.

> 2) The other feature that I think would be very powerful is the
> multi-function aspect of the navigation bar. I would certainly find it
> useful to launch detached gramplets directly from the navigation bar - I
> don't use them enough at the moment. Perhaps we could make the
> navigation modes plugins? This would lead to a flexible interface and
> make future expansion easier. There have been a couple of good
> suggestions for navigation modes involving filters and searches that I
> hadn't thought about.

Many system these days have open-ended hooks for running many kinds of
extensions (thinking of wordpress or drupal). We just need to define
these places where extensions can appear, and define an interface.

> 3) Tabs. Do we want them or not? I put them in the design because they
> are a common and intuitive interface and I'm sure people use them at the
> moment. We could use them as a method of switching between workspaces.
> We could have only one workspace by default and leave multiple
> workspaces an advanced feature - I don't know where we want to go here.

I think that they make sense where you can have a list of similar
kinds of things. I'd remove the option to make the current Views tabs,
and use them inside of each view for these new workspaces. That's the
way that the new Thunderbird email interface works (a search will
bring up a new workspace).

> I have been using gramps for less than a year so I am not in a position
> to suggest the best solution, but I thought it would be helpful for me
> to put forward some ideas.

Keep think about how to integrate this... we need to refine and polish.

Thanks!

-Doug

> Feel free to make more comments and suggestions.
>
> Regards,
>
> Nick.
>
> Nick Hall wrote:
>> I was recently thinking about improvements we could make to the current
>> user interface.
>>
>> It needs to be both powerful and yet simple and intuitive for "Aunt
>> Martha" to use.  Whilst using Nautilus, which has such an interface, I
>> thought that it would be applicable, with a few modifications, for gramps.
>>
>> I have put together a few images to illustrate some ideas and uploaded
>> them to http://www.gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=1644
>>
>> Hopefully this will help others expand upon these ideas.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Nick.
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
>> is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
>> developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
>> ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gramps-devel mailing list
>> Gramps-devel@...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel
>>
>>
>>
>
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[Nick Hall-6]

Doug Blank wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Nick Hall <nick__hall@...> wrote:
>  
>> There has been some feedback on this, so I thought it would be good to
>> summarize the main ideas.
>>    
>
> Nick,
>
> This discussion has been very useful, and productive, so thanks for
> that. Also, you are at a perfect stage to be able to still remember
> your initial first-reactions to the UI and how may have met your
> expectations, or not. Some further thoughts on your summary below.
>
>  

It is because that I can remember my first reactions to the UI that I
thought my input would be useful.

>> 1) One of the most useful features that has been suggested is allowing
>> multiple objects in a workspace. This may be gramplets alongside a view
>> or two views together. In my opinion we should plan for this when we
>> design the navigation bar even if we don't want to implement it for the
>> next release. I think that we should think in terms of workspaces
>> instead of views.
>>    
>
> I think the key idea here is that we want to give people the power to
> re-use gramps components in their own ways, but give them an easy to
> understand foundation for doing it. I think this refinement will
> tie-up a lot of loose ends, and maybe make the interface more
> consistent. Here are some possibilities along these lines:
>  

Exactly.
> - People Views: this is a category (from the left-hand pane) of all of
> the people lists, one per tab. One can create additional tabbed
> people-views, name them, and have a filter or search criteria
> associated with it. I can imagine having a few tabbed workspaces into
> my family: "Everyone", "My Family", "Spouse's Family", "Current
> Research", etc.
>  
Yes.  Perhaps users will not want to see "Everyone" most of the time.  
This is the default at the moment, when a user selects a view they get
all the records, but do they really want to see all records?

Maybe they want to see a single surname, or two?  Maybe just people
closely related to a chosen person?

Also when a user wants to edit a person they use the person view as a
selector.  Is there a better way to do this?

When it comes to adding a person to the database I don't think that a
new user is guided to the best method.  It is natural to display people
and then click the add button.  Again the user gets a list of all people
in the database when they probably don't need it.

A better way to add a person may be from the family or pedigree view.  
Perhaps a menu which lists functions rather than data structures would
be helpful for new users.  For example, a "What do you want to do?"
menu, with items such as "Browse family tree", "Edit Person", "Add a
Child", "Add a Parent", "Make a backup".
> - Event, Family, Media, Note, Place, Repo, Source Views: these all
> have a category entry on left, and tabbed workspaces.
>  
They could have their own workspaces, but I don't see users wanting to
open all of them at the same time.  By selecting one it could just
replace a view in an existing workspace.

> - Each workspace can have a gramplet attachment area (side or
> bottom?). If the gramplet is sensitive to a changed-active signal, it
> will be to this view.
>  

Yes.  I under-use gramplets at the moment.  With the special tab for
them at the moment I tend to forget that they are there.
> - This could do away with the "detached gramplet" idea. They would
> always be attached to some view.
>
>  
Possibly - we could still have detached gramplets as an option if we
wanted to.

> - Perhaps we can use this to clean up the two different methods of
> search/filter. Side Filters work one way, and the top-search works a
> different way. Let's get rid of the top search and make them work the
> same way. I'd rather have a general "Search:" that will search all of
> the data in a view.
>  

I had only just started to think about searching.  Perhaps a separate
button on the toolbar to bring up a search dialog.  Perhaps putting the
filter side bar in the navigation sidebar.  Can we search all object
types at the same time?   Do we want to put the search results in a new
workspace (new tab or new window)?

>  
>> 2) The other feature that I think would be very powerful is the
>> multi-function aspect of the navigation bar. I would certainly find it
>> useful to launch detached gramplets directly from the navigation bar - I
>> don't use them enough at the moment. Perhaps we could make the
>> navigation modes plugins? This would lead to a flexible interface and
>> make future expansion easier. There have been a couple of good
>> suggestions for navigation modes involving filters and searches that I
>> hadn't thought about.
>>    
>
> Many system these days have open-ended hooks for running many kinds of
> extensions (thinking of wordpress or drupal). We just need to define
> these places where extensions can appear, and define an interface.
>  

Yes, I was looking at the gedit interface which allows addons to use the
sidebar.

I was hoping we could get this into 3.2, but with just a single plugin
to start with.

>  
>> 3) Tabs. Do we want them or not? I put them in the design because they
>> are a common and intuitive interface and I'm sure people use them at the
>> moment. We could use them as a method of switching between workspaces.
>> We could have only one workspace by default and leave multiple
>> workspaces an advanced feature - I don't know where we want to go here.
>>    
>
> I think that they make sense where you can have a list of similar
> kinds of things. I'd remove the option to make the current Views tabs,
> and use them inside of each view for these new workspaces. That's the
> way that the new Thunderbird email interface works (a search will
> bring up a new workspace).
>
>  

I use Thinderbird but I'm not too sure what you mean by this.


Regards,

Nick.

>> I have been using gramps for less than a year so I am not in a position
>> to suggest the best solution, but I thought it would be helpful for me
>> to put forward some ideas.
>>    
>
> Keep think about how to integrate this... we need to refine and polish.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Doug
>
>  
>> Feel free to make more comments and suggestions.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Nick.
>>
>> Nick Hall wrote:
>>    
>>> I was recently thinking about improvements we could make to the current
>>> user interface.
>>>
>>> It needs to be both powerful and yet simple and intuitive for "Aunt
>>> Martha" to use.  Whilst using Nautilus, which has such an interface, I
>>> thought that it would be applicable, with a few modifications, for gramps.
>>>
>>> I have put together a few images to illustrate some ideas and uploaded
>>> them to http://www.gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=1644
>>>
>>> Hopefully this will help others expand upon these ideas.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Nick.
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
>>> is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
>>> developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
>>> ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
>>> http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Gramps-devel mailing list
>>> Gramps-devel@...
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day
>> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on
>> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with
>> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
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>> Gramps-devel@...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel
>>
>>    
>
>
>  

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