Re: [platform-ui-dev] Support a less disruptive work mode by moving popu

[Stefan Xenos <sxenos@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On a previous project, I came up with a UI pattern that might be useful for this effort. I called them "Edilogs" -- basically they were editors that had the look, feel, keybindings, and content of a dialog box. They'd often have "OK" and "Cancel" buttons at the bottom which could be activated via the "esc" and "enter" keys, and for edilogs that supported an "apply" binding, the save action was redirected to be the same as apply.

You would use them in situations where you'd want to ask the user a quick question, present a wizard, etc., and could be used as a fairly direct replacement for most dialog boxes. The big difference between edilogs and dialogs is that edilogs are always nonmodal and they are docked in the editor area so can be rearranged using the usual workbench layout system, and navigated using the back stack and other useful tools for editor navigation.

Edilogs are actually already familiar to most users since they look and feel a lot like web pages. When a website needs to ask you something, it normally directs you to another page rather than opening a popup window. In our UX study, users were not suprised by the change and 100% of the user feedback we received indicated a preference for the edilogs over the dialogs they replaced.

At the time, I'd written a bunch of utilities with API very similar to various JFace dialog box utilities, so switching from a dialog to an edilog was usually just a matter of switching base classes and changing a few lines of code.

You wouldn't want to use edilogs in all circumstances -- they would steal focus if ever opened by a background task so should only ever be opened in response to an explicit user gesture, but the metaphor works well for thiings like wizards, preference pages, confirmation dialogs, and other UI that gathers more information from the user in response to a user-initiated command.

  - Stefan

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 6:20 AM Daniel Megert <daniel_megert@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sounds good.

I agree with Lars that we should first improve some areas before we try to come up with guidelines and write a new framework,.

Dani



From:        Lars Vogel <lars.vogel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To:        "Eclipse Platform UI component developers list." <platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:        22.06.2016 15:13
Subject:        Re: [platform-ui-dev] Support a less disruptive work mode by moving popups and dialogs to inline editing and notifications
Sent by:        platform-ui-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

---

Thanks Stefan and Sopot for your support on this issue.

I think we can add bugs which relates to this work to the wiki. For
example https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=495369which
would allow to rename resources inline (depends on
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=74892).

Also we should work with other teams, like the EGit team on some of
their popups and dialogs, e.g.,
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=473538. They also work
on an improved find. I personally would like to see a similar search
popup for the text editors if I press Ctrl+F. See
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=496278for the EGit bug

Once we have fixed the most common annoyances in platform (and other
popular extensions like the EGit plug-in), we can also update the UI
guidelines. But I think we first should lead with good examples.

Best regards, Lars

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 9:37 AM, Sopot Cela <scela@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I also support this and actually have work in my pipe to handle some of the cases. We sometimes even have dialog upon dialog scenarios like it was with the Capabilities preference (bug 488214). I am planning to work on the editing of environment variables in bug 483084 which perfectly fits with this email's concern.
>
> Overall I'm up for having a super bug tracking these cases and a guideline for the most re-occurring patterns.
>
> Sopot
>
> ----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
>> Van: "Lars Vogel" <lars.vogel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Aan: "Eclipse Platform UI component developers list." <platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Verzonden: Dinsdag 21 juni 2016 18:48:04
>> Onderwerp: [platform-ui-dev] Support a less disruptive work mode by moving popups and dialogs to inline editing and
>> notifications
>>
>> Friends of Platform UI,
>>
>> This week I delivered a(nother) Android training session with Android Studio.
>>
>> While I definitely think our Eclipse IDE is superior in terms of
>> stability and performance,  I think IntelliJ has sometimes a nicer
>> user workflow.
>>
>> The workflow in IntelliJ itself is rarely disrupted by popups or dialog.
>>
>> I think we should improve support for this in our framework. Bad
>> examples in the Eclipse IDE are IMHO EGit, which shows popups for
>> almost every operation. Or the refactoring or the search operation
>> with their annoying dialog, typically over the interesting content.
>>
>> I therefore clarified and extended a bit the 4.7 target which was
>> originally called "Migrate the Mylyn notification framework":
>> ---
>> Support a less disruptive work mode by moving popups and dialogs to
>> inline editing and notifications
>>
>> Eclipse popups and dialogs can distract the workflow of the user.
>> The Platform UI team should evaluate if popups can be avoided and
>> notifications or inline editing can be used.
>> For example, renaming a resource should be possible without a dialog.
>> Notifications about a finished job should not require a dialog, etc.
>>
>> To archive this the Eclipse Platform UI team plans to migrate the
>> Mylyn notification framework to platform UI. This change has been
>> discussed with the Mylyn team and was well received.
>>
>> ----
>>
>> Best regards, Lars
>>
>> --
>> Eclipse Platform UI and e4 project co-lead
>> CEO vogella GmbH
>>
>> Haindaalwisch 17a, 22395 Hamburg
>> Amtsgericht Hamburg: HRB 127058
>> Geschäftsführer: Lars Vogel, Jennifer Nerlich de Vogel
>> USt-IdNr.: DE284122352
>> Fax (040) 5247 6322, Email: lars.vogel@xxxxxxxxxxx, Web:
>> http://www.vogella.com
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--
Eclipse Platform UI and e4 project co-lead
CEO vogella GmbH

Haindaalwisch 17a, 22395 Hamburg
Amtsgericht Hamburg: HRB 127058
Geschäftsführer: Lars Vogel, Jennifer Nerlich de Vogel
USt-IdNr.: DE284122352
Fax (040) 5247 6322, Email: lars.vogel@xxxxxxxxxxx, Web: http://www.vogella.com
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