quality@glassfish.java.net

Re: Opinions Wanted: v3 GUI Prototype

From: Ken Paulsen <Ken.Paulsen_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:16:51 -0800

See Comments inline...


Wouter van Reeven wrote:
Hi Ken,

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:36:31PM -0800, Ken Paulsen wrote:
  
  • Do you like/dislike the menus?
  • Do you like/dislike the tree?
    

I like both the tree and the menu. A pro for the tree is that it is more
subclassed than the menu. For instance, in the Configure menu there is a
Resources sub menu. Here all resource types are listed in one menu item apart
from Connectors. I would opt for introducing JDBC, JMX en JNDI sub menus.

One more thing: when I click in a random part of the gui with a menu open, it
doesn't close.
  
Yes, the menus should close when clicking elsewhere on the GUI, this is a known bug.  Also clicking on the menu name itself doesn't behave correctly either yet.
  • Do you like/dislike the tagging feature?
    

It's probably me, but I don't understand the tagging feature. My first
impression is that it would be some kind of bookmarking feature, but it's not.
What do I use it for?
  
The idea is to associate pages with a name.  This would allow you to use it like bookmarking, or other things.  For example, you can tag your favorite pages with "favorite", then you could goto the "favorite" tag and see all those pages.  Or you might choose to provide categories for pages, like "Monday tasks", "stuff to monitor", "HelloWorld Related" -- this would allow you to see all the pages you need to visit on Monday, or pages you like to monitor, or pages related to the Hello World application.  There are *many* possibilities on how this feature could be used.

Now... what we are obviously struggling with is how to best present this powerful feature in a way that: A) makes sense to the user; B) is easy enough to use.  We could provide a tag page that shows all tags, a menu of "favorite tags"... or maybe a drop-down of tags on the right, a search (as we have in the demo), or something else entirely....  There are lots of ways to visualize this.  Any idea on how you'd like to see this?

By the way, when I click the Add Tag button with no text in the input element, I
get an application error page
  
Yes, this is a known bug.
javax.servlet.ServletException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
while attempting to process a 'command' event for 'newTagButton'.

One more idea: how about adding links to other domains on GlassFish? Click the
link and the admin console for that domain opens. I guess it would mean some
advanced security implementation that only shows links for other domains that
the currently logged in user has access to. Just my $0.02. I haven't used
domains much and I am not sure how many installations there are that have
multiple domains.
  
Yes, we plan to address multi-domain management, however, it will probably happen in a subsequent release.  Our current release will be focused on getting the feature-set back up to par with what was in the "developer profile" of v2.  Later we will begin adding these types of features.

Thanks!

Ken

Thanks, Wouter van Reeven