Tom Hoffman
2006-10-16 23:23:04 UTC
The biggest honking issue in SchoolTool right now is navigation and
the general organization of the web interface.
Right now, we've got a few main UI elements:
A top bar with the current view's path and a few relevant links to the
user's calendar, etc.
On the left sidebar, a "Navigation" menu.
Below that, an "Actions" menu.
I think we have to use the top of the screen to switch between the
main blocks of functionality in SchoolTool from the teacher's and
student's perspective: calendar, attendance, and gradebook. We could
do this with tabs, icons, or perhaps something else. This doesn't
necessarily scale indefinitely, if you run out of room for tabs, but
we can worry about that later. Probably admin functions would be
another tab that only shows up for people with the right permissions.
I think we could probably also get rid of the breadcrumb links. They
tend to cause problems anyhow when the heirarchy gets too deep and the
titles of objects too long.
The navigation menu isn't much more than a list of container objects
in the database. It is somewhat useful only to admins/managers, who
at least have to touch all those places at various times. For
teachers and students, the navigation menu should only contain a list
of the sections and courses they teach/attend.
The action menu will retain its function, but hopefully it will be
more focused if only actions relevant to the user for that specific
view and object are available at any given time.
Anyhow, that's my thinking at this point. I think we can improve
things significantly without having to fundamentally rework the UI.
Comments?
--Tom
the general organization of the web interface.
Right now, we've got a few main UI elements:
A top bar with the current view's path and a few relevant links to the
user's calendar, etc.
On the left sidebar, a "Navigation" menu.
Below that, an "Actions" menu.
I think we have to use the top of the screen to switch between the
main blocks of functionality in SchoolTool from the teacher's and
student's perspective: calendar, attendance, and gradebook. We could
do this with tabs, icons, or perhaps something else. This doesn't
necessarily scale indefinitely, if you run out of room for tabs, but
we can worry about that later. Probably admin functions would be
another tab that only shows up for people with the right permissions.
I think we could probably also get rid of the breadcrumb links. They
tend to cause problems anyhow when the heirarchy gets too deep and the
titles of objects too long.
The navigation menu isn't much more than a list of container objects
in the database. It is somewhat useful only to admins/managers, who
at least have to touch all those places at various times. For
teachers and students, the navigation menu should only contain a list
of the sections and courses they teach/attend.
The action menu will retain its function, but hopefully it will be
more focused if only actions relevant to the user for that specific
view and object are available at any given time.
Anyhow, that's my thinking at this point. I think we can improve
things significantly without having to fundamentally rework the UI.
Comments?
--Tom