Simple backend UI enhancement proposition

Posted by Jacques Le Roux on Jan 21, 2007; 11:28am
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Simple-backend-UI-enhancement-proposition-tp143920.html

After an exchange with Ian McNulty about UI clarification, I thought a bit for a solution (actually I did not thought a lot, the idea was there, clear, when I waked up ;o)

Ian is not the 1st to complain about backend complexity. Yes, my propostion is only about backend. Because IMO eCommerce and POS (and handheld now) are more there for demo and POC purposes. They are not intended to be used as is but are ready to be enhanced, proposing a way to go. They are meta-templates actually. On the other hand and that's why backend is mostly build with screen and form widgets : it does not need to be too sophisticated (that does not mean that you can't build sophisticated UI with widgets ;).

From my experience when it comes to backend, even big companies (I mean multinational corporations) are not inclined to put a lot money in. They will perhaps want some enhancements here an there but they do no want to re-create it all. This to said that we may try to ease its use even for them.

My proposition : some screens (for instance Catalog/Product, Catalog/Store, etc.) are always showing all the possible fields to use. We may add (and generalize everywhere possible) a way to hide (or show) not mandatory fields or maybe not important fields (because in most case showing only mandatory fields make no sense). For instance we may put 2 buttons near language set zone at top of screen : "show (or hide) required fields" or something like that. This is easy to achieve and will reassure users about the backend usability (ergonomy). We only have to create 2 set of fields for each screen. If a screen is not concerned the sets will be the same and the buttons will have no action, simple isn' it ?

What do you think ?

Jacques