Portlet drag and drop

[Herb Wideman]

Hi Michelle,

I took a quick test drive of the 2 versions (on Win XP, IE 7) and I think the new version does a much better job of showing the user what he or she is actually doing with the elements being reordered - I find it much easier to work with. One recommendation - when I drag the weather portlet, for example, upwards to move it above the calendar on your test page, the calendar stays where it is; it does not move down until you let go of the weather box. Would it not be more obvious where the drop location was going to be if the calendar portlet moved down as you started dragging the weather portlet up, leaving an empty space between the two for the drop? Obviously this approach has the disadvantage of losing the visual cue for the original location of the weather portlet as it would be "covered over" by the moved calendar portlet but to me the advantages of this design outweigh the disadvantages - it would make it much clearer where the dropped item would be placed. (I also experienced some intermittent flashing of background items when a portlet is being slowly dragged that is a bit distracting and might confuse those with certain visual or cognitive disabilities.)

Herb

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:57:23 -0400
From: "Michelle D'Souza" <michelle.dsouza at utoronto.ca>
Subject: Portlet Drag and Drop
To: fluid-work <fluid-work at fluidproject.org>
Message-ID: <319505CA-A0FE-44F3-9808-09D58DAE58E5 at utoronto.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

Hi,

I know there has been some conversation about the best user experience  
for reordering portlets. I thought it would be useful if I built an  
example to show the alternate user experience.

You can see the new experience here: http://build.fluidproject.org/sakai-imagegallery-tool/sample-code/reorderer/portal/portalWithAvatarClone.html
and the original experience here: http://build.fluidproject.org/sakai-imagegallery-tool/sample-code/reorderer/portal/portal.html

One of the problems with the new example is that it also showcases one  
of our evil bugs. :)  The bug is that the drop target shows up  
somewhere but the portlet drops elsewhere.
http://issues.fluidproject.org/browse/FLUID-407  It's quite a tricky  
little bug from a technical standpoint because the underlying problem  
is that we are getting browser events in the wrong order.  We have a  
strategy for working around this issue but it is quite complex and  
will take a while to implement.

Michelle


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Michelle D'Souza
Software Developer, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre
University of Toronto