[Sigia-l] guidelines, resources, thoughts on tree and menu design

[Listera]

"Markus Mayer" wrote:
[...]
> - latency of the menu
> - point-and-click vs. just point
> - how to handle cascades
> - use visual cues to indicate menu entry currently selected
> - etc....

On a desktop OS, the apps that use these (more often than not) simply make
calls to GUI APIs and the OS handles the rest.

On a web interface, you have to handle them via JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, etc.
That means the there's no consistency that comes with the OS handling them
for all apps. For example, latency of DHTML interfaces changes widely with
platforms, browsers, etc. and certain combination of these may not even work
at all on certain OS/browser/version permutations.

Is it a good idea to to use deeply-nested pull-down menus on a web app? I'm
no Nielsen :-) but, if there isn't an exceedingly strong reason in favor of
it, I'd avoid it. (Also who are you going to shake down by saying it's 99%
bad anyhow? :-) 
 
> A second question arose around the design of a web-based tree widget.

So you really want to get religious about these, huh :-) In general, I can't
find a good enough reason at all to use a *file browser* paradigm to
navigate relational data. VB developers almost universally default to the
use of an hierarchical list (tree widget), because, well, that's what they
know and it's relatively easy to set up, etc.

I think I've written about my feelings about the inappropriateness of this
approach and the issues of factoring out common data in each node which
should really be handled by another approach.

The easiest way to handle related data is to present the master grid as an
HTML table. Make each relatable item linkable. Click on one and a small
window should open with just the appropriate view displaying the drill-down
data associated with the link.

Having said that I also wish the functionality of a tree widget could be
somehow incorporated into HTML and it's certainly appropriate for a lot of
stuff. In the end, what you use depends of the particulars of the situation.
It's hard to make an 'at-large' recommendation.

Best,

Ziya