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The new Web service wizard has a very cool new graphical first page. However, the sliders are confusing. There is no indication of the values that the sliders can take. In fact, both the service and client sliders take five values: develop, assemble, deploy, install, and test (I believe). The UI would be much improved if the sliders indicated these along their length. Notches to show the allowed values would give more user feedback. Maybe some clicking audio feedback too. Related to this are the five icons arranged in an arc. I expected to be able to click on the icons to move the slider. The slider position is reflected in the icon highlighting, so why not let me just click the icon? Lawrence - please ask Janet to look at this. Thx.
Arthur, thanks, these are good ideas, but I should probably shed a little background. Joan and I worked quite extensively with Janet and our own usability folks on this design. We explored a number of goals in terms of look, feel and behaviour for this page, including having better icon/text indications and notches integrated into the slider, and/or complete fusion of the sliders with the graphics. The sliders are new, and perhaps confusing at first, but I believe they possess a fast learning curve. In the end, the realities of the schedule and limitations of SWT existing portfolio of controls limited our imaginations somewhat. We made a number of concessions to accomplish this first cut (one I am extremely proud of BTW!) in WTP 1.5. I intend for us to take this page to "the next level" of slickness in a future release, however, I'm not sure in what future release we will manage it since our assessment was that some major SWT control surgery or invention of a new class of control (reported to be ill-advised to any but on the SWT team) would be necessary. Another area I would like us to revisit down the road are the summary areas to the right of the graphics. When I first thunk up this idea, I was thinking of these areas containing prose text with embedded hyperlinks to server names, project names, etc. vs. the bullet points they are now. The current layout works well, but sometime down the road I would like to try some other layouts for this information. I'm switching this to an RFE for us to track, and am assigning it to me to shepherd. If you disagree with the change in severity, let me know. Thanks - CB.
Chris, I think the UI is an improvement, but I humbly disagree. I think there is too little feedback about what the possible states of the slider are. I'm not even sure what the states actually mean, and I've been working on Web services for years. You introduced new verbs (Develop, Assemble, Deploy, Install, Test) - some are obvious, but what is the dividing line bewteen these in terms of what the wizard will actually do? The fact is that there are a discrete set of positions (5) and you are mapping this to a continuous control. This is a mismatch. Notches or horizontal ticks on the slider are trivial to add to the image of the slider. You could also add more textual feedback, e.g. in a status area, that explained the meaning, i.e. what the Wizard does.
Arthur, I won't belabour the 'severity' point, and will see what we can do, but our options are limitted in WTP 1.5 for reasons relating to documentation and translation of images. The verbs "develop", "assemble" and "deploy" are straight from the J2EE standard. The verbs "install" and "test" have been there in previous incarnations of the wizard, represented using different controls (radio buttons or check boxes, mostly). I agree the page needs to provide more guidance. We may be able to accomplish this with better text in the banner and/or to the right of the graphics, with hover help, and with changes to the slider's background image such as by injecting notches so that the stopping points are clear. A slider with discrete steps was exactly what we were after, so I'm assuming the "mismatch" is that the control gives the impression of being continuous in nature, then turns out not to be.
Chris, thx. I think I read the J2EE spec once - I doubt our users have. But at least now I know that you are using those terms in the J2EE sense. Most words are very overloaded so it's good to know the context.
Over to you, Joan. Thanks.
Created attachment 41378 [details] multiple plugin patch - consumption & creation ui - text changes This patch contains the wizard banner text changes. This patch can be committed anytime. I will put the graphics updates in a separate patch when I get them. thanks, Joan.
Kathy - as mentioned, please commit the text changes. I'll attach patches for other changes next week. thanks, Joan.
Chris, for your approval for WTP 1.5 RC3.
Created attachment 41595 [details] graphics zip - notched slider backgrounds This attachment is a zip that needs to be included in the icons directory for ws.consumption.ui and ws.creation.ui Tested the images...they are ready to go. thanks, Joan.
Thanks Joan - The updated icons look good. Approved for RC3.
Released to WTP 1.5 RC3 as v200605171621.
Re-opening. Looks like this got released but not committed if that is possible!? Tried to verify on wtp-sdk-S-1.5RC3-200605182217
Joan, sorry, but you're right - I did not commit them. I've applied the changes to my workspace, will seek approval for RC5, then - all being well - commit and release.
Back to using the target milestone field to indicate intended as well as actual target miletones/RCs. This bug is a candidate for 1.5 RC5.
This is a bitmap update only in which the slider background images have been equipped with notches to indicate to the user that the slider controls have discrete stops. This is a trivial fix that solves a fairly confusing usability problem. Requesting PMC approval for WTP 1.5 RC5.
+1 for for WTP 1.5 RC5. This is a simple UI update and will improve usability. Thx.
+1
+1 for 1.5.
The patch containing the images is committed to HEAD, but not the patch containing the text changes since it is too late in the cycle to update properties that would need translation. Bug 145432 is open to handle this in the next release.
Comment on attachment 41378 [details] multiple plugin patch - consumption & creation ui - text changes Patch transferred to bug 145432.
Released under tag v200606060303.
Verified on wtp-sdk-M-1.5.1-200609150551.zip
Thanks Arthur. Closed.
