Jay-
Looking good.
I'm in agreement with your proposal. I also agree the tooltip format
needs some work. I don't think it's immediately clear that the 2nd line
is the type hierarchy. Since we're not constrained for space, I'd add a
label to make it obvious, and perhaps also add a label to the ancestry
names, e.g.:
Ancestry Names: JVM > RHQAgent > jshaughn
Ancestry Types: RHQ Agent JVM > RHQ Agent > Windows
Also, it's not intuitive that the ancestry starts at the resource's
parent rather than at its root ancestor. To me, the ">" signs generally
imply starting at the root of a hierarchy. So I would either try
reversing the ">" signs, e.g.:
Ancestry Names: JVM < RHQAgent < jshaughn
or explicitly calling out the order, e.g.:
Ancestry Names (starting at parent): JVM > RHQAgent > jshaughn
or both:
Ancestry Names (starting at parent): JVM < RHQAgent < jshaughn
I also like the idea of embedding P/S/S icons in the ancestry, in the
table and in the tooltip. It would be particularly useful in the table,
where the ancestry types are not shown, e.g.:
[Service icon] JVM < [Server Icon] RHQAgent < [Platform icon] jshaughn
In this case, it would tell the user that jshaugn is a platform, which
otherwise is not obvious.
- Ian
On 03/11/2011 11:04 AM, Jay Shaughnessy wrote:
I moved this info to wiki if you'd rather see it there:
http://www.rhq-project.org/display/RHQ/Disambiguation+API#DisambiguationA...
On 3/10/2011 5:51 PM, Jay Shaughnessy wrote:
> Where oh where did the pictures go... let me try again
>
> On 3/10/2011 5:11 PM, Jay Shaughnessy wrote:
>> Thanks for the input so far. What I'm hearing:
>>
>> - The rhq3 solution favored the ability to disambiguate given the
>> on-screen information.
>> - There are several corner-cases that make a single display format
>> difficult.
>> - The rhq3 solution can be difficult to parse and/or understand given
>> lack of visual uniformity (the trade-off for putting it all on screen)
>> - Try and utilize smargwt as best as possible.
>>
>> So after playing with this stuff for a bit I've been looking at two
>> different formats for the Resource/Name column in various views. In the
>> Inventory Views we have just the resource name and the ancestry resource
>> names (note that here we also have Plugin and Type columns but that is
>> more the exception than the rule):
> inventory view
>> And in other places, like portlets, we have a more verbose resource
>> field:
> portlet
>> Currently, in both views the Ancestry provides "hover" information
that
>> gives type info to supplement the resource name info:
> hover
>> Note that there has been no attempt made in rhq4 to mimic the
>> contextual, varying display, approach used in rhq3. At the moment the
>> column formats for name and ancestry are fixed.
>>
>>
>> I think I'm in favor of the following approach:
>>
>> 1. The Name/Resource column should be consistently named. For
>> consistency throughout the UI I would recommend 'Resource'.
>> 'Name' is not sufficient as resource information is often
>> embedded in views of a different contxt, like in the portlet
>> above. Also 'Resource Ancestry' makes more sense than 'Name
>> Ancestry'.
>> 2. On screen we limit the 'Resource' column value to the resource
>> name (like shown above for the inventory view), and 'Ancestry'
to
>> the resource name ancestry (as shown above). This provides a
>> consistent, clean viewing experience that in many cases will
>> provide enough D12N for the user, in the given context. Since all
>> of the values are links the fonts and colors are uniform.
>> 3. Provide Hover information for both Resource and Ancestry values.
>> This is more than what we have at the moment, which is just for
>> Ancestry. Although expanding rows are nice, we use that
>> elsewhere
>> in the GUI for different purposes. Typically to provide detail
>> about the above row (like audit info) as opposed to a more
>> verbose
>> rendition of the same. Also, it requires a click which is a bit
>> more work than hover for performing D12N between rows.
>> 4. For the Resource I think the hover should contain the Plugin,
>> Type
>> and Resource Name. A format like seen above, simple, unchanged
>> for different locales, maybe:
>> * PluginName TypeName *ResourceName*
>> * PluginName TypeName *ResourceName*
>> * PluginName / TypeName *ResourceName*
>> * PluginName, TypeName *ResourceName*
>> * [PluginName] TypeName *Resource Name*
>> 5. For the Ancestry things are a little trickier. I don't love the
>> current hover format, the staggered rows are hard to parse. But
>> the separation of name and type into two hierarchies is fairly
>> clear. Addtional ideas:
>> * Single line (could get very long) :
>> o [RHQAgent] RHQ Agent JVM *JVM> *[RHQAgent] RHQ Agent
>> *RHQ Agent> *[Platforms] Windows*jshaughn*
>> o *
>> *
>> * I'm a bit afraid of a tall, tree-like format, but it may
>> work:
>> * [Platforms] Windows*jshaughn***
>> *> [RHQAgent] RHQ Agent *RHQ Agent *
>> *> [RHQAgent] RHQ Agent JVM *JVM*
>> * *
>> *
>> * or maybe even a table format (if I could figue out how to
>> format that so the columns are even):
>> o RHQAgent RHQ Agent JVM *JVM*
>> o RHQAgent RHQ Agent *RHQ Agent*
>> o Platforms Windows* jshaughn*
>> o *
>> *
>> 6. For inventory views, keep Plugin and Type columns. It allows for
>> more sorting options and can provide D12N help. I suggest
>> actually we reorder the columns to be Ancestry, Plugin, Type,
>> Description. I think this is most useful for D12N,
>> description is
>> generally not looked at, I think. Also, in general display plugin
>> to the left of type. I think it's a bit clearer to prefix the
>> type with its defining plugin. Although verbose, since plugins
>> can and do share type names, I think we have to keep plugin name
>> in the D12N display.
>> 7. In certain views, like selectors, there is only one column, In
>> this case the hover should combine the Resource and Ancestry
>> info.
>>
>> So, the approach is basically to favor a clean, uniform look over
>> immediate coverage of all D12N scenarios. And to use hover for more
>> verbosity when required.
>>
>> Jay
>>
>>
>> On 3/10/2011 11:02 AM, Alan Santos wrote:
>>> On Mar 9, 2011, at 9:09 AM, John Mazzitelli wrote:
>>>
>>>> IMO, the main problem with the JSF UI D12N columns is that it is
>>>> hard to
>>>> understand or interpret those D12N columns easily when there is more
>>>> complex hierarchies to be displayed... they aren't "user
friendly".
>>>>
>>>> Even when I see them - I have a hard time understanding what its
>>>> telling
>>>> me without me staring at it and thinking about it - it doesn't just
>>>> "come to me" for lack of a better way to explain it.
>>>>
>>>> I guess what I am saying is - it should be made more intuitive.
>>>>
>>> ditto. I'm confused by the order and content of a few columns. I
>>> also think putting everything into a single, flat row makes it more
>>> confusing.
>>>
>>> So, some specific thoughts that I hope are helpful:
>>>
>>> *) I don't understand the point of the resource type in the first
>>> column. The user can't sort on that column and my suspicion is that
>>> the user cares much more about the information in the 'type' column
>>> than the server/service/platform column. It's also redundant when
>>> searching from the inventory report pages.
>>>
>>> *) Plugin column - does this really matter for the typical
>>> use-cases? If I'm trying to debug a new plugin or perhaps deployment
>>> I can see the value, but otherwise I don't.
>>>
>>> *) We've committed to smartgwt, so why not take advantage of it?
>>> e.g.
>>>
http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#grid_expanding_details
>>>
http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#tree_appearance_multicolumns
>>>
>>>
>>> I frequently hear that the UI displays *too much* information. I
>>> don't know if it's possible, but displaying only the important
>>> subset of information and retrieving the rest when the user asks
>>> (e.g. expands the row) seems like it might solve some problems in
>>> the UI as well as the server.
>>>
>>>
>>> *) why not take advantage of grouping?
>>>
>>> I think it's perfectly reasonable to provide a default grouping
>>> (e.g. platform or managed type). If I'm not mistaken smartgwt makes
>>> it pretty easy to let the user change grouping.
>>>
>>> e.g.
>>>
http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#grid_summaries_featured_cat...
>>>
>>>
http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#grid_grouping_dynamic
>>>
>>> -alan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> rhq-devel(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
>>>
https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/rhq-devel
>>>
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--
Ian Springer
Principal Software Developer
JBoss Operations Network
Red Hat
ian.springer(a)redhat.com