in reply to Nodelet settings usability problem

Yes, the nodelet configuration interface is a bit crufty. Most everybody agrees that it sucks, but no-one has enough tuits to do anything about it. Moving nodelets around is a real pain. Someone suggested, and I agree with, the idea that all your nodelets would be numbered 10, 20, 30... in text fields, and you could just edit 30 to 15 to place it between the first and second nodelets. Sort of like adding new lines in BASIC programs.

As for the super-search newest/oldest nodes toggle, it is indeed disabled. The functionality behind it isn't there yet. Quoting tye: "I'd like to support searching "newest nodes first" but the MySQL optimizer will likely fight me on this." (excerpted from Newest Super Search).


print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Site usability
by castaway (Parson) on Jan 20, 2003 at 10:11 UTC
    Ah, thanks for the hint about the search, so thats just a 'missing feature'.
    A combo-box list thingy with '1st' '2nd' '3rd' etc as values (enough for all available values) would do it as well, though I guess thats tricky as 'submit' has to check that each value is only chosen once..
    Or, similar to the other idea, have a text box where each of the numbered nodelets can be entered in the order you want, '10 40 20 50', same problem as above though. Dividing numbers by two as you said sounds a bit strange to me..

    C.

[reply]
      It isn't about dividing by two (30 to 15 might be a bad example). It's about ordering the sections based upon their number, but being allowed to skip numbers.

      It is reminiscient of BASIC, where you had line numbers to control the order of your lines. You could number your lines 1, 2, 3 and so on, but a smart programmer would number the lines 10, 20, 30--skipping numbers which could later be used if you realized you needed to insert a line or two between existing lines (editors were bad in those days, and just renumbering all your lines wasn't really an option).

      Personally I think this would be a good solution, especially if the lines were actually renumbered before being displayed to the user (or for internal storage), so that each time you examined the page you'd have the extra space in between numbers again. Having two boxes with the same number isn't a problem if they're renumbered before storage, since the system would just do a sort and renumber, which would remove the conflict (the order of the nodelets with the same number might be wrong, but if you give two lines the same number you can expect that you might have to do some futher work to have things the way you really want them).

      Update: Ah, I see tye has already implemented something (that's what I get for not reading the whole thread before writing). I'd say go ahead and replace the old interface...can anyone prefer it? Or there's the usual make-it-a-poll option...

[reply]

In Section Perl Monks Discussion