Difference between revisions of "SUN Report Builder/Usability"

Revision as of 12:54, 21 November 2008

This is a collection of usability issues found with the Sun Report Builder extension. Usually, they should be put into IssueZilla issues, and low hanging fruits should be fixed ASAP.

iTeam Meetings

2008-11-17

• Add Field window:
  • When dragging entries to the document, both created controls should have an equal width. Otherwise, it's pretty inconvenient to create and modify/maintain a tabular structure in the report.
  • Currently table fields are sorted like they appear in the table definition, but sometimes reversed/alphabetical sorting is desirable. Should have buttons (toolbar?) for doing so
  • when no section is active, double-clicking an entry (or pressing enter) does nothing. Should put into the Detail section by default.
  • There should be a help text at the bottom of the window, stating something like "Double-click onto an column name, or drag and drop it into the document, to create a field displaying this column's data."
  • There should be a button "Insert" at the bottom of the window, which does the same as double-clicking / DnD'ing an entry. This would make it more obvious to the user what is needed. (Note: Already implemented in CWS frmdlg
  • Drag and drop of multiple fields to the report is not possible. As soon as you click onto the multi-selection to start dragging, it is reverted to a single selection. Doing the same via pressing the enter key works as expected, though.
• property browser
  • selecting an entry from a combo box'es drop down list by mouse should immediately activate this change. Currently, you still need to move the focus out of the combo box, which is silly.
  • opening a new report should already fill in the first found table (if any) into the "Content" field of the property browser, so the report is already bound to this table. This gives the user a better clue what's needed, since the "Add Field" window will also immediately be open, listing all the fields of the table.
• misc
  • Controls in the design should show a placeholder text, indicating the data source of this control. That is, if a control is bound to, say, table column "City", then a gray placeholder text "=City" should be drawn in the control.
  • There are situations where marking multiple fields does not update the various alignment buttons in the toolbars - they stay disabled.
  • multi-selection of controls in the design is too slow. Adding a new control to an existing selection can take multiple seconds.