People often click the “Settings” link when they see “HTML list | Settings” which causes them to miss how to change the main formatter settings. This came up during the BADCamp 2012 usability study, in essence people :
- Accidentally click the wrong one, to change either the kind of list and or adjust its configuration (settings)
- Are surprised to find settings after clicking Apply (the first time configuration
Having examined the different screens this occurs caching, pager, menu, acces, format etc. I have found that most of them use this only to capture a small set of settings, thus gaining very little in terms of vertical real estate that is needed to capture all of the settings. Only some of menu, and some of (exposed format) would benefit from this pattern. But even then I think the time that all of our users lose on accidentally clicking the wrong one, is a huge gain on the lost vertical experience of minimal scrolling.

I suggest wherever possible we merge the two settings, using states to disclose the right kind of settings.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #19 | vdc-1836440-19.patch | 11.09 KB | dawehner |
| #14 | drupal-1836440-14.patch | 10.91 KB | dawehner |
| #14 | interdiff.txt | 868 bytes | dawehner |
| #12 | drupal-1836440-12.patch | 10.83 KB | dawehner |
| #5 | drupal-1836440-5.patch | 10.8 KB | dawehner |
Comments
Comment #1
Bojhan commentedUpdated the summary, also raising criticality. Primarily because this small usability issue, has a large cumulative cost in time that people spend accidentally in the wrong place. Also given that I'd like to see this fixed as part of D8.
I have updated the summary.
Comment #1.0
Bojhan commentedUpdated issue summary.
Comment #2
dawehnerI will start with converting the style settings, and just see how this goes.
Comment #3
dawehnerThat's just a start, but submitting values does work.

Comment #5
dawehnerJust fixing the tests, so this should be at least green.
One thing which would be cool in this issue or maybe a follow up: use ajax reload the available settings for a style/row.
Comment #6
Bojhan commentedNo idea, this wasn't showing in any of my trackers. Added it to my blog post, and definitely worthwhile to persue the AJAX reloading without it its quite confusing
Comment #7
Bojhan commentedComment #8
dawehner.
Comment #9
yoroy commentedbecause of a typo in the 'usability' tag :)
Comment #10
dawehner#5: drupal-1836440-5.patch queued for re-testing.
Comment #12
dawehnerRerole.
Would be cool to have people playing around with it.
Comment #13
damiankloip commentedThe patch works well enough in it's current form. We need to add ajax updating of the options part of the form though. So this mimics behaviour we already have for exposed form checkbox and single/grouped filter radios.
Comment #14
dawehnerThat's just a start.
Comment #15
aiypz commentedHad a play around with the patch and this feels much clearer. As damianKloip says the ajax part to update the options will be important as a user could easily change some options for one format and then decide to change the actual format which will really confuse them when they then apply it.
Comment #16
yoroy commented#14: drupal-1836440-14.patch queued for re-testing.
Comment #18
Bojhan commentedThis is really great, could this get some more work? This is one of the few major Views UI issues.
Comment #19
dawehnerJust a rerole.
Comment #21
Bojhan commentedIt looks like it failing on the same thing as before
Comment #21.0
Bojhan commentedupdatin
Comment #22
tim.plunkettThis needs a proper issue summary. It's not clear why this is major, nor how the patch attempts to address the issue.
Comment #35
smustgrave commented10 years ago was requested for an issue summary with no follow up. So wonder if this is even still a valid task?
Comment #37
quietone commentedThanks for the work on this issue. There has been no work on this task for 11 years, except to ask if this issue is still relevant. It is likely that it is no longer needed or has been implemented. Therefor, closing.
If there is work to do here, then either re-open the issue and add a comment or open a new issue and reference this one.