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Create a new Remote System Type of type Unix and walk through the creation wizard on the Files, Processes and Shells pages. These pages should be improved to make them more intuitive for the user: - The table Configuration uses checkboxes for selection. Since only one entry can be selected at a time radio buttons could be used instead - It's not intuitive for a user that a selection in the Configuration table is associated with the list of available services. Creating individual tab pages for each configuration could improve this - It's not intuitive for a user to find out to which entry in the UI the properties are associated with. Since the properties table is located at the same height like the configuration table, it looks like properties of configurations are shown. Actually they are associated with the selected services - Properties are shown in a table using key value pairs. Instead UI widgets should be used - Tooltips should be reviewed, e.g: "Select the configuration you wish to use to enable this subsystem. A configuration comprises a connector service and a subsystem service" - The UI exposes technical details which are not relevant to the user, e.g.: The FTP subsystem shows a "FTP File Service" and a "FTP Connector Service". Since there is nothing the user will modify, there is no value to show these artificial (technical) entries at all - From technical point of view it is relevant to distinguish between a connector service and a subsystem service, but is it really necessary to expose this fact to the user?
We discussed this briefly on http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/DSDP/TM/Committer_Phone_Meeting_20-Mar-2007 A basic idea to change the wizard is to make it more dynamic as follows: * The first wizard page gives a selection of available services. Users can do multi-select. * Depending on the selection, if additional information is required for a service, additional nicely laid-out pages are presented when pressing Next. * For not-required optional configuration, each selected Service can be configured by pressing a Properties button if such properties exist. * If none of the selected services require additional configuration, the wizard can be finished immediately (Finish enabled). This resolves presenting unnecessary options to the user, and allows a nicer UI for the presentation. It also fixes the issue of properties shared by multiple services, e.g. the dstore Server Launcher (bug 174778) because this property page would be shown only once even if multiple services use it. This idea also makes it easier for vendors with non-standard connection schemes to still integrate other standard services: such vendors would just contribute a dynamic newWizard of their own for their basic configuration, and then show the service selection page for allowing additional optional services to be added to the connection. When we last discussed this in the committer meeting, we got hung up on whether multiple services of the same kind should be allowed or not (bug 174495); but in terms of the wizard re-organization this is an implementation detail that can be resolved separately. This idea is also slightly related to bug 174789, because for the wizard pages shown after the "Next" button we should investigate re-using code from the Property Pages if possible. The only problem with this is, that it is unlikely we have time for all this for TM 2.0 unless we get additional resources. Since it is a major feature change, it would need to be complete by M7 which I can't see we can achieve.
Consider after 2.0. Note that this is somehow related to bug #186560 asking for PropertySet names to be localized. If the wizard and property pages are improved to not directly exposed the PropertySets, there is no need to localize the PropertySets themselves.
Some thoughts: * On first page, categorize the available services by service type (like a tree) * Services do not have properties attached (they are non-UI, even below Core). - Each service pulls in a ConnectorService / Subsystem. Properties are associated with the ConnectorService / Subsystem. * DaveD is against sub-dialogs in the wizard * For those services that have been selected: - Present property pages for additional configuration in additional wiz pages - Would be interesting also for Service Discovery "Subsystem Port" concept is not used consistently * George: for advanced web services, the TPTP folks added a concept of a generic simple wizard; on the Finish page, when an "Advanced" button is pressed, Finish gets disabled and Next gets enabled - ISVs mark up their wizard extension as "advanced" vs. "mandatory" --> extension point wizardExtension with markup "mandatory" or "advanced" --> when the given subsystem or connectorservice is selected, the wizard adds the corresponding page(s) in the mandatory or advanced section Currently, advanced button is on the first page; would be better on the last one WTP has a "speedometer" kind of complexity meter on 1st wizard page - users select how much info they want in the wizard
