[Mailman-Developers] [Mailman Confluence] Development > Web UI Mockups

[David Champion]

* On 05 Aug 2010, Anna Granudd wrote: 
> 
> Other people having suggestions/ideas/thoughts on the design are more than
> welcome to post them. We might start with this view in a few days so the
> more feedback we can get on the design before starting the better.

I have a couple of suggestions on the membership settings UI.  I'm not
sure how in-scope these are for the current discussion, but I don't want
to look for a better place and forget to say anything. :)

1. Many people must interact with several different MLMs, so anything
   Mailman can do to establish a middle ground among configuration
   terminology is very good.  It's pretty common for user options to be
   phrased in terms of what the particular MLM expects users to want,
   but I think it would be better to phrase them in a consistently
   positive language, so that users aren't in the position of choosing
   double negatives: "don't not do this thing".  In the mockup this
   would mean changing "Hide Address (YES/no)" to "Show Address
   (yes/NO)" -- where caps indicate what I assume to be the default.

   This has to do partly with code development rather than with site
   design, but the design is affected.

2. I guess this is really several thoughts rolled into one, but since
   I'm diagramming it's easier this way.  The mockup suggests that
   clicking a membership settings option for a list reloads the window
   with the settings -- or at any rate (even if it's not a page load)
   that it replaces the view completely.  I'd rather see this in the
   same frame, with the settings box's content replaced when a list is
   selected.  Let's see if I can still do ascii art:

    -------------       -------------------      --------------
   |User settings|     |Membership settings|    |Admin settings|
   --------------------                     --------------------------

               +----------------------------------------------------+
   List 1      |  Membership settings for list 3                    |
               |                                                    |
   List 2      |  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, et cetera...          |
               |                                                    |
   L*st 3      |  Show address          [ ] yes    [x] no           |
    *          |  Receive list copy     [x] yes    [ ] no           |
    *click*    |  Receive own postings  [x] yes    [ ] no           |
    *dhtml* -->|  ...                                               |
    *magic*    |                                                    |
               |  [Copy settings]          [Paste settings]         |
               |  [Reset to defaults]      [Change settings]        |
               |                                                    |
               +----------------------------------------------------+
   -------------------------------------------------------------------


   ... with admin settings working similarly.  My thought for copy/paste
   is that settings can be serialized in Javascript into a JSON object
   and stored in a hidden element on the page, and recalled for another
   list's settings.

   There probably needs to be a setting for "pasting" settings to all
   lists, too.

   The "Admin settings" tab need appear only if there are actually lists
   that you admin, and as Adam said it might be nice to place a little
   shortcut beside the list name in Membership settings.

-- 
 -D.    dgc at uchicago.edu    IT Services    University of Chicago