360team.ca - 2009-12-04

Hi, Everyone!

Since I use XRMS more and more, I have become more and more annoyed with the structure of some of the UI forms from a usability perspective.  You probably noticed that I already refactored the /activities/activities-widget.php since I would consider the old one to have been useless except for very perfunctory activity creation.

I'd like to take this further and I wanted to get some feedback if you feel that the ideas are worth implementing:

**/activities/one.php** 
The "About This Activity" table is vertically long and horizontally sparse which results in a form that needs to be scrolled up and down.  From a usability perspective, in my opinion, this is a 'NO-NO'.  There are many short fields which can be lined up next to each other horizontally, shortening the form considerably.  For example:<br />

  - "Company", "Contact" and "Attached to" can fit on one line
  - "Activity Type", "Activity Priority" and "Owner" can fit on one line
  - "Entered By" and "Last Modified By" can fit on one line
  - "Scheduled Start" and "Scheduled End" can fit on one line
<br /><br />

The "Schedule Followup" functionality is deficient in that it does not allow the setting of the followup activity date and time - this is hard-code set at 1 week in /activities/new-2.php.  Instead, I feel that "Schedule Followup" should be a checkbox which, when checked, would toggle the visibility of an additional /activities/actvities-widget.php to enable the creation of the followup activity. 

**/activities/activites-widget.php** 
I think this widget also needs a "Schedule Followup" checkbox to toggle an additional /activities/actvities-widget.php and thus enable the creation of the followup activity.

**/contacts/one.php** and **/companies/one.php** 
I don't feel that the "New Activity" widget (/activities/activities-widget.php) should always be present on the page.  Again, in makes the page long and scrollable (yikes!).  I propose that there is a "Create Activity" button which would toggle the visibility of the "New Activity" widget with javascript.

I have some more ideas but the above will keep me busy for a bit.  However, before I implemented those in the core, I wanted to get some feedback if you agree that these would be beneficial to the system.

Can you let me know what you think?

Cheers! 
Ivaylo

PS: The new Sourceforge Forum Markdown syntax is a nuisance!  Yet another markdown to learn and think of!  Sheesh!