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What usability improvements do you want to see in the Notes Widgets wizards?

Mary Beth Raven  October 30 2008 01:15:17 PM
Hello power users, app devs and admins who use the "My Widgets" feature that shipped with Notes 8.0.1.

We have a small window of opportunity to make usability improvements to the wizard for creating the widgets, and the My Widgets sidebar panel, so I'm asking what you'd like. The bother here is that I am not allowed to add any new FUNCTIONALITY, just make usability tweaks :(

WIZARD: Here are some thoughts I've had. First, please go try to build a widget  and then come back and answer these questions.
1. We have a toolbar with 3 buttons.  We had the first button to really give you a very generic overview. As a wizard, tho, it is very lacking because it gets to a point and says things like "So now go open the web page you want and then click the toolbox icon". So is it worth keeping, to help people get up to speed?
. Image:What usability improvements do you want to see in the Notes Widgets wizards?

2. Terminology. To us, the Widget is the finished thing, a combination of a Component that has a wired action to a recognized content type.I consciously decided to use the term component because composite applications, and the Comp app editor, use components, and these very same components that you create with the my widgets wizard can be used in the Comp app editor. BUT I am worried that  we are splitting hairs with our vocabulary. Any comments?

3. The whole "ok now enter a REGEX" part is horrifying to me, but since it's so generic I can't really  seem to come up with something that is better while still being generic.

SIDEBAR PANEL
To be honest,  I do not think a sidebar panel as a container of widgets (including other sidebar panels) is the appropriate thing to have.  I think of the whole My widgets" thing as a main-window app where Raj or Michaela would go to manage things (Philippe-- our new persona--see yesterday's post-- and the others do not BUILD widgets, they use  ones that other folks build for them).

In the future when I'm allowed to add functionality, I want to make the "Widget management" a part of the newly-designed workspace.  Philippe wants to go to ONE place to manage all his stuff- his databases, plug-ins, widgets, bookmarks etc. Thoughts?

IF I am stuck with a sidebar panel for at least the next few point releases, I want to give you a tree control view and a flat list view in addition to the Thumbnails.

And for general sidebar stuff, if you drag something on a sidebar panel that is collapsed, and hover, that panel needs to open up so you can drop it inside.  These ideas are "new functionality" so I dunno how far I'll get.

I look forward to your comments.