Update: Now known as Awesometray.
Overview: Enhancing usability has been always one of the top goal in Drupal and Dries always stresses this in many occasions. I did a little research on my own site usage habits and one of my frequently visited site is of course Facebook (aren't most of us is guilty of this). I did several recordings of my habit while using the said site and one of the clearest most used feature of Facebook for me is the shortcut bar that hovers at the footer of the screen. Primarily this shortcut bar provides links to applications, quick access to notifications, history and chat.
However one of the short-comings of the shortcut bar is its inability to provide shortcut to other pages other than applications. For example there is this user profile I frequently check (i wont tell why :D) and it requires me to click through 2 other pages just to get there. Doing search also troubles me because I often mistype her name (its a name that sounds common but spelled differently).
The obvious solution of course is create a link on the shortcut bar of the browser, but this kind of defeat the purpose when I often use other computers such as cafe or simply -- I just want to keep it away from prying eyes.
Proposal: I'd propose to build module that provides a hovering toolbar, completely customizable for each user unlike the menu. This toolbar can also display quick dhtml pop-up which can display a Block, a View or an Application (Eg. Embed Widget's embeddable script output). It also provides a "bookmark this" option that will automatically add a shortcut of the current page and provides some option to customize the shortcut icon. Each shortcut can also display subtle information clues such as if a node that was bookmarked was updated, a visual clue is added on the shortcut icon (Eg. "(new),"*", change of icon background, or number of new items added).
For these features to work, it clearly requires an API so that other modules can hook into the shortcut and modify its behavior. Then it can also take advantage of caching and other related speed enhancing modules. Somehow it will work with the blocks module so that the position of the shortcut bar is not limited to be always horizontally hovering at the bottom. Such that adding the shortcut bar on the top block would render it hovering on the top of the page (even adjusting the entire header to leave a space for it as well). Finally this should also work nicely with the color scheme module.
Introduction: Hi, My name is Roger "Godie" Filomeno, its my second year joining SoC as a mentor and Im from the Philippines. I work as a systems engineer and PM at iPay mainly focusing on financial systems but I also work for other telecoms bases company. On my spare time I provide consultancy on use of open-source solutions with enterprise level systems where Drupal is always my top recommendation as a CMS.
Difficulty Rating: MEDIUM
Fun Rating: EXTREMELY AWESOME
Mentor(s)/Co-Mentor(s):
Roger Filomeno
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| DHTMLshortcutbar.png | 68.92 KB |
Comments
I would like to refer to
I would like to refer to http://drupal.org/project/admin_dashboard, as I am not sure whether this module really improves "usability" or if its just a nice tool to have. I would like to see more information, maybe some sketches of your idea? To really evaluate it.
Its different
Ive been using admin dashboard as well as 2 other variants of it and sadly they added more clutter than usability and not to mention they are intended for users with admin role.
I think the best way to see this shortcut toolbar is sign-up for facebook but Ive attached a screen shot with annotation as well. Take note what im trying to propose IS a clone of facebook shortcut toolbar plus enhancements.
Enough?
I'm not sure this is enough for a SoC project... I know i'm not the best person to compare to, but i bet I could code something like this in 8 hours.
I think its the API bit that's more where the work lies on
I think its the API bit that's more where the work lies on. I could probably code this too in lesser time by just stuffing it into a custom template. Here are more things I think it should be able to do but I already would call them part of the wish list:
Existing block to DHTML popup - would make the site cleaner, I have this site that has 8 blocks on the right side bar and most of the time the side block is longer than the content block. Ugly. DHTML blocks could fix them but it still take much of the spacee (remember that most common screen resolution, there is always more width than height).
Existing View to DHTML popup - I have this View that shows recent content posted, basically shows how many users are in queue from another system. The DHTML needs to be updated through JQuery in regular intervals but when its collapsed shows the number on queued users (also updated through JQuery)
Existing Form to DHTML popup - its a form users can submit data frequently. Think of it as the design idea behind twitterfox, its always a form a click away whatever page you are on.
A shortcut that icon with visual clues - for example if bookmarked this discussion in the toolbar and i go surfing to other discussions on g.d.o the bookmark stays visible. Then when you posted a reply, I dont have to rely on the email notification to tell me that someone replied.The shortcut just changed color or flashes to indicate that someone updated this page.
Now imagine all this being possible without an API, just too ugly in a single module.
Ive tried already building this for the company I work, its for a call center operation so letting users create custom shortcuts without cluttering their view of the call tree showed tremendous increase on productivity. There are days that users will create shortcut on a specific page coz most of the customers inquiries for the day focuses on that page. Then the next day its another. But that's on our private site using Drupal, I already made this but I cant release it since is a corporate product.
Regarding if it fits on SoC, my experience last year being a mentor is not to spec something too complicated. I see SoC as a venue to entice students to be part of the developer community and not ask them to build spaceships. So proposals must be balanced to something small enough to scope but not stupidly easy. Thats also why I think to have students build more into APIs and can clearly be used by other modules is more rewarding; while other features such as the wish-list about can be developed after SoC giving student more reason to "stick" around.
BTW there was a mishaps with my proxy and ended up making multiple posts, sorry for the flood in your inbox.
I'm interested!
I am hugely interested in this project. A shortcut toolbar has been a "wouldn't it be nice if" for me for a while now, ever since I found admin_menu_dropdown and wanted something similar for all my users. My idea was much more for just a simple toolbar for menus (tying everything together), but I saw that there are pieces and parts of that around for use.
This, however, seems to be almost untouched on Drupal, and I like it, a lot. It'd provide yet another nifty feature to help make an awesome site for just about anything, without a ton of trouble. I'd love to be a part of this one.
Cheers,
Ed
Great! Let's have it
Great! Let's have it nominated to Official Ideas and welcome aboard! If possible, please introduce yourself to the group for the record, part for Drupal SoC is not just about building codes/modules -- It also a nice time to know other people and possibility of building business relationships with them. That's why SoC rocks!
Cool!
Awesome. I think this one will be fun.
I'm a student from the computer science department at the University of Maine. While my school's about dead-center in the middle of Maine, I live in southern Maine during the summer.
I'm big into baseball (Red Sox lifer--please, don't let there be any Yankees fans reading this!) and have been picking up the bass guitar and synthesizer over the last year or so. Kind of a music geek in general, and when I'm at school I actually stream whatever I happen to be listening to at the moment.
This is my third time going through the Summer of Code process. In 2007 I worked on a package manager concept for WinLibre, a French organization, and last year I worked on a toolkit for Visual Studio to facilitate better interoperability between Mono and Visual Studio until a full VSPackage can be developed; as I understand it, pieces of what I've done have been co-opted into that project. Outside of GSoC, I do some web consultancy with local businesses and organizations; I'm currently working up a new site for my campus's Student Government and a proposal for a local company that does corporate governance analysis.
-Ed
GSoC proposal posted!
Hey there!
I've posted my GSoC proposal regarding this idea. It can be found here.
Thanks,
Ed
This is my first time..
Hi,
This is my first time I've decided to do a project on GSOC.. I went through it and I'm also interest this idea.I think It's improve usability of Drupal but It seems like simple..I've worked with Drupal for 6 month..
thanks
mahesh..