Users - [VOTE] userinterface consistency

[Hans Bakker]

OFBiz users,

When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
with todays date if not supplied.

So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
"filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
everywhere?

please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
on this.

The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
add a child category to a parent category...

obviously i would like to vote too: +1

--
Regards,
Hans Bakker
ANT Websystems Co.,Ltd (http://www.antwebsystems.com)

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from the above person, download the public key from:
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[BJ Freeman]

In general, I would like to see preferences setup so all fields can be
filled in with defaults and passed parameters.

Hans Bakker sent the following on 3/20/06 6:43 PM:

> OFBiz users,
>
> When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
> the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
> parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
> with todays date if not supplied.
>
> So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
> "filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
> everywhere?
>
> please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
> on this.
>
> The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
> add a child category to a parent category...
>
> obviously i would like to vote too: +1
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[David E. Jones]

This is off-topic and should (and now does) have a different subject.

How would such flexible and global preferences be any different or easier to maintain than the current form widget XML files? Are you thinking of thousands of lines of properties files or something?

-David


BJ Freeman wrote:

> In general, I would like to see preferences setup so all fields can be
> filled in with defaults and passed parameters.
>
> Hans Bakker sent the following on 3/20/06 6:43 PM:
>> OFBiz users,
>>
>> When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
>> the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
>> parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
>> with todays date if not supplied.
>>
>> So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
>> "filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
>> everywhere?
>>
>> please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
>> on this.
>>
>> The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
>> add a child category to a parent category...
>>
>> obviously i would like to vote too: +1
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
>> Users mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[Jacopo Cappellato]

+1

My vote is about setting up a best practice that says that the fromDate
fields (that are in the pk) should be filled with the today date (if a
date is not explicitly passed); as a consequence of this, fromDate
fields should always be optional fields in the service definitions.

Jacopo


Hans Bakker wrote:

> OFBiz users,
>
> When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
> the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
> parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
> with todays date if not supplied.
>
> So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
> "filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
> everywhere?
>
> please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
> on this.
>
> The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
> add a child category to a parent category...
>
> obviously i would like to vote too: +1
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[Andrew Sykes]

+1

But it might be nice to add the ability to adjust the default fromDate
for example...
now - 1 hour
now + 1 day
--
Kind Regards
Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
Sykes Development Ltd
http://www.sykesdevelopment.com

 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

+1

Same comment than Andrew Sykes : adjustable default date

Jacques
 
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[Si Chen-2]

+1

I agree--great idea!

Jacques Le Roux wrote:

>+1
>
>Same comment than Andrew Sykes : adjustable default date
>
>Jacques
>
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[David E. Jones]

-1

In general I don't think any pattern or rule should be applied without consideration of the specific circumstance. Not ever. It's difficult to write any generality that is effective in most cases, and impossible to write one that is always effective.

For this specific general rule there may be cases where an assumed fromDate is just too much of an assumption and could cause problems when users are not paying attention.

As a bit of background the code that started this discussion is the safeAddProductToCategory which is a service that calls the same code as the addProductToCategory service, but it has a different service definition that requires the fromDate. The reason this "safe" service definition was added was to avoid cases in production deployments of OFBiz where products go live on a site accidentally.

If the current consensus is that we don't care about this particular case, then that's fine, let's change it.

Creating a general rule or pattern through voting without discussion in advance is something that I can't see being a good idea, as a general rule.... ;)

-David


Hans Bakker wrote:

> OFBiz users,
>
> When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
> the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
> parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
> with todays date if not supplied.
>
> So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
> "filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
> everywhere?
>
> please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
> on this.
>
> The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
> add a child category to a parent category...
>
> obviously i would like to vote too: +1
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[Jacopo Cappellato]

I agree with David when he says that we should run a voting only after
that adequate discussions have been performed, so that everyone can
express his opinion and also get the ones of the others.

I still think that it would be nice to add in services, in general, the
logic to fill with now timestamps the fromDate fields if empty: this
doesn't mean that this is true for all the services and that we will
have to bulk change all the existing code in the system without a review...
On the other hand I'm not sure I like the idea of default time offset:
it seems to me too much arbitrary to set the same time offset for all
the entities.

But yes, probably this discussion should have happened before the
voting, not during it.

For example, I'm sure that, even if Hans's statement was a bit drastic
("filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied applied to
everywhere"), after your explanation about the safeAddProductToCategory
service, he'll agree with you that we should not apply this rule there.

By the way, these are the very first votings and we are learning the
best way to perform them... and I think that it's nice to see this happen.

Jacopo

David E. Jones wrote:

> -1
>
> In general I don't think any pattern or rule should be applied without consideration of the specific circumstance. Not ever. It's difficult to write any generality that is effective in most cases, and impossible to write one that is always effective.
>
> For this specific general rule there may be cases where an assumed fromDate is just too much of an assumption and could cause problems when users are not paying attention.
>
> As a bit of background the code that started this discussion is the safeAddProductToCategory which is a service that calls the same code as the addProductToCategory service, but it has a different service definition that requires the fromDate. The reason this "safe" service definition was added was to avoid cases in production deployments of OFBiz where products go live on a site accidentally.
>
> If the current consensus is that we don't care about this particular case, then that's fine, let's change it.
>
> Creating a general rule or pattern through voting without discussion in advance is something that I can't see being a good idea, as a general rule.... ;)
>
> -David
>
>
> Hans Bakker wrote:
>> OFBiz users,
>>
>> When I was demo-ing the system to a potential customer i ran into a case where
>> the startdate needed to be specified to be able the add a child category to a
>> parent category although in general in the system the start date is filled
>> with todays date if not supplied.
>>
>> So the question is, in the standard system should we have this principle of:
>> "filling the startdate with todays date if not supplied" applied to
>> everywhere?
>>
>> please let me know by the apache voting method +1 0 -1 if you have an opinion
>> on this.
>>
>> The reason the date is mandatory here was that it shouldn't be to 'easy' to
>> add a child category to a parent category...
>>
>> obviously i would like to vote too: +1
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  
>> _______________________________________________
>> Users mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>

 
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