UI for Selecting Assigned Groups
jacobson - October 11, 2007 - 02:15
| Project: | OG Subscriber Management |
| Version: | 5.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | User interface |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
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Description
This module is a terrific idea. I believe, however, that selecting groups to assign to a user will get tough as the number of groups in a site grows beyond 10 or so. Scrolling to the right to see all the groups is going to be a real challenge. May I suggest a different approach?
Have one multi-select list box that allows the user to choose one or more subscribers to manage. Then, have a second multi-select list box that lists all the groups. The user simply highlights all the users and all the groups to which the users should be subscribed, and then presses submit. Perhaps you even can create a check-box list box, though I'm not sure that such a UI element is standard with most browsers or readily added.
HAJ
#1
Well that approch would work, you would still have problems with cases when you have thousands of users and hundreds of groups (the multi-select lists would be huge).
What's not obvious with the current approach is that both the user lists and the group lists are pagered, which means you only have access to 50 of the groups and 50 of the users at once. So you would change those 50 users groups, and then the next 50 and so on.
No matter what UI approach we take though, this will still be a difficult thing for a really large user base to use.
Dave
#2
Maybe another solution is to let the user decide between UI?
Dave
#3
You are no doubt correct that long multi-select lists would also be challenging, but the challenge becomes manifest with the current UI with only 8-10 groups. With multi-selects, the list length would be manageable at least up to 50. IMHO.
HAJ
#4
Another issue that occurs to is that this form also lets you unsubscribe users. I guess I can put in a small select with actions 'subscribe, unsubscribe, make admin, remove admin' and the two multiple selects you suggest.
In the background though, how are you going to know which users are already subscribed to which groups? Are you expecting to be able to overwrite their previous status? Or does the module need to confirm that each individual user may or may not already be a member of the group in question? What should the default behaviour be?
Dave
#5
Good question, Dave. Hadn't thought about how to indicate current membership. I think (a) a warning that any selections will overwrite current membership and (b) possibly a way to see the membership of one selected user -- perhaps by highlighting the groups in the multi-select when only one user is selected in the user multi-select?
HAJ
#6
It would be pretty easy to modify the single user select form to include these features, but I'm still unsure how to manage to gigantic all users form. If we do as you suggest, I'm convinced that we will lose the fine grain ability to manage subscribers' groups. Another feature of the current form, as large as it is, is that you can use the form to find out very visually which users are already assigned to which groups, so the form can be used as an information source.
However I found out last night that although the form works in IE 6, 7, Firefox 1.5, 2.0, and Netscape 9.0, it fails in Opera. So whatever I do, some change is necessary for Opera.
Dave
#7
I don't have a good answer to the conundrum, but I'll be glad to test whatever you decide to try.
HAJ