inter-column portlet movement

[Herb Wideman]

I found when testing out the inter-column portlet movement after reading 
this thread that ambiguity is generated not by the "This box cannot be 
placed any higher in this column"message itself but by the fact that 
this message pops up almost immediately as you start the lateral move, 
implying it applies to the current column, not the one you are moving 
the portlet to. My suggestion would be to delay the appearance of the 
message until 60%+ of the portlet is centred over the new column - then 
I think the meaning would be clear. Using the term "locked box" as has 
been suggested may not seem technical to designers, but to a general 
audience the word "locked" could lead to confusion. especially for those 
with some impairments (if they don't notice or can't properly interpret 
the little lock icon in the locked portal).

Aside from this issue, the lightbox and reorderer functionality and ease 
of use now seem outstanding - congratulations to all who worked on this!

Herb Wideman
Senior Researcher
Institute for Research on Learning Technologies
York University

+1

I agree with Daphne--the error message as it stands doesn't make much  
sense in that context. I would use the "This box cannot be placed  
above a locked box" wording. (If we don't want to use the word  
portlet, which is another potential choice but perhaps too technical,  
the only other words I thought *might* make sense here are module,  
section, or cell.)

On May 23, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Daphne Ogle wrote:


> > Nice work!  In general I think it looks great.
> >
> > I'm still a little concerned about the ambiguity of the message about
> > dragging over a locked portlet.  "This box cannot be placed any higher
> > in this column" doesn't make sense if I'm dragging the right topmost
> > portlet over the left since I'm not really trying to move it up but
> > rather over.  It also doesn't tell the user what the problem is.  What
> > about "This box cannot be placed above a locked portlet." (or box if
> > that 's the terminology we are using)?
> >
> > -Daphne