8-24-07 Interface Cell Minutes

Attending:

Stan, Amit, Matt, Milena, Loretta, Stefan, Catherine, Andrew, Alejandro, Mike

Monk Workbench Sketch v.8:

• Milena: It's not finished.
  • The first page is the most unfinished...

• 1st Page:
  • Present an intro screen the first time the user comes to the page explaining a bit about the workbench.
  • Subsequent visits would skip this page.

• 2nd Page:
  • Tools at the bottom are inactive because there is no tool set selected.

• 3rd Page:
  • Tools are now active at the bottom because the recipe can be customized now.
  • Shows the steps in the recipe.

• 4th Page:
  • Shows current tool set as well as a way to see the additional tools as well.

• 5th Page:
  • Shows maximization of space where both tools and current tool set are closed.

• 6th Page:
  • Shows how things look with a couple of open tools.

• Everyone: Nice work Milena.

• Stefan: On the 2nd page, can some of the tools be available for selection where if they select one, it creates a new tool set?
  • Matt: Some tools are not available at first, but they can be grayed out.
  • If the tools are not grayed out, it also allows us to visually show which tools are compatible with which tool set (e.g. when the user rolls over a toolset, all of the tools in that set could highlight).
  • Everyone: Nice idea.

• Catherine: List of tools is dangerous because it implies that there is some level of sequence importance.
• Stefan: The recipe idea is nice to give novice users an idea of what to do.

• Catherine: We need to re-visit the wording...
  • Recipes make people think of cooking. This implies a linear sequence (i.e. in cooking you start from the beginning go to the end). We don't want to imply this...

• Task set vs. Tool set?
• Stefan: Package?
• Tool set vs. Recipe?
  • If we call them recipes, are the components ingredients?
• Tool kit vs. Tool set?
• Virtual application?
• Maybe needs new terminology...
  • Stan: Let's make a list of visited terminology so we don't waste too much time

• Catherine: Can we totally remove the tools palette except for advanced users?
  • Even minimized it is in the way and uses up a lot of real estate.

• Stefan: There are still some technology questions that are unanswered with respect to implementing this interface.
• RAP (server-side) vs Javascript (client-side):
  • Javascript method might be easier.
  • Either way, it will take some effort to realize the sketch (unless we just do a quick prototype).
• Advantages of RAP:
  • Leveraging a very well-documented, well-used model (it's based off of Eclipse).
  • Write components once with RAP and have a component available to both desktop and web apps.

• Amit: RAP has some downsides:
  • Very little documentation so far.
  • Still in Alpha stage.
  • All components will have to be Java components, not HTML.
  • Basically, You are using Java to write HTML...

• Stefan: Maybe the best solution will be some form of parallel development where components are tested quickly with javascript, then eventually ported to the production RAP version.

• Next two weeks for Matt and Alejandro?
  • Update will be posted to the mailing list.

• Proxy Update From Amit:
  • Working with Loretta to understand FeatureLens.
  • Step one is get FeatureLen behind the proxy so it has access to all NORA data.
  • Interface designers should be telling Amit which calls are needed - he can fake them for us on fairly short notice.

• Catherine: I will try to think about necessary tools / combos.
• We need to lay out nice sets of tools.

• Stefan (joking): We should build a terminology selector tool.
  • Matt: That's not that ridiculous...
  • This also brings up the potential need for other customizations down the road (e.g. other languages).

• Loretta: We need to build in some sort of accuracy reporting.
  • The accuracy can't be known until after the process.

Next Meeting: Friday September 7

• Two weeks from now - Friday, September 7th.