11:39 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lior Vernia" <lvernia(a)redhat.com>
To: "engine-devel" <engine-devel(a)ovirt.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 4:12:36 AM
Subject: [Engine-devel] UI by-products of Neutron integration
Hello everyone and specifically UI peeps,
Just wanted to turn your attention to a couple of reusable UI components
that have been introduced along with the 3.3 Neutron integration
feature, and that might be of interest elsewhere.
The most interesting of them are link columns to be used within
EntityModelCellTable instances, that upon clicking enable one to "jump"
to a different UI context by selecting a different entity in the system
tree. I've attached a couple of screenshots that show how we've used it
to quickly navigate from the context of a network provider to that of
one of its imported networks.
This could be useful wherever one might want to move quickly to a main
tab context of an entity that is secondary in the current context. For
example, say I just moved a storage domain to maintenance and now I
would like to edit its properties - the domain name might be a good
candidate to link to that storage domain item in the system tree.
Lior, this is a good interaction paradigm but it is good only if it is a consistent
interaction paradigm. Based on my conversations with various users so far, I see some
emerging issues on the way the system tree is perceived and also some of the confusions it
is causing in people. Because of the way it is positioned prominently and permanently on
the left, it looks like it drives the content on the left but that is not 'always'
the case. Based on which main tab you are on and based on the level of granularity on the
tree, the changes on the right change or sometimes only the search box updates. At some
point, we should definitely look into trying to make the expectation between the tree and
content more obvious and consistent and your approach seems to be pointing in the right
direction - i.e, the tree should always reflect your current context on the right.
Having said that, I am not sure we should plug this interaction in as an additional
variant in some places as the users will totally be lost as to what behavior will occur
anytime they click a link or node.
If you guys are ready to look into this in a more holistic manner, Eldan and I will be
more than willing to spend some time coming up with a proposal to share with you all
and/or we will be open to ideas from all.
The usage is pretty straightforward, the recipe is as follows:
1. Add tree items that are potential targets to the map member in
SystemTreeModel (map works by ID).
2. Add LinkColumnWithTooltip to required table.
3. Set the column's FieldUpdater to set the selected item of
SystemTreeModelProvider according to the ID of the clicked EntityModel.
Examples can be found in the following patches:
http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/15523/
http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/15524/
A couple more components which might be useful:
* HorizontalSplitTable comprises two tables separated horizontally, to
be used in import/export situations.
* ListModelListBoxColumn to be used with EntityModelCellTable, contains
a list box that's linked to a ListModel.
* EditTextColumnWithTooltip to be used with EntityModelCellTable,
contains text that can be edited upon clicking.
All three can be observed by navigating to the Networks main tab and
clicking "Import", examples for usage may be found in
ImportNetworksModel and ImportNetworksPopupView.
Lior.
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