Addressbook add contact dialog

[svens]

I just played with the "add contact" dialog in the demo. Three points need overhaul:

- It should be possible to navigate via TAB/<Shift>-TAB (Changing Tabs via <Ctrl>-Tab).

- apparently there is a TLD check on the email address. Unforunately it doesn't work correctly: Once you have provided an email with a valid TLD you may ruin it without further complaint by the UI.

- Hitting "Apply changes" then goes without feedback (neither positive nor negative) and after dismissing the dialog the newly added contact cannot be found in any addressbook.

Apparently some check at save time (the ruined TLD I assume) has rejected the entry but without feedback to the user.

I am not sure a TLD check is a good thing anyway:
- If TLDs are officially added, all installations must be maintained, so the TLD list must be a preference accessible by the admin.
- Intranets may introduce arbitrary TLDs; another point why the TLD list must be a pref.
- Is it really worth the hassle to test for a valid TLD?

Sven

[nelius]

Hi Sven,

Thanks for this detailed report!
Lars is in vacation, when he's back, he'll take a look at it, as addressbook is his baby.

As for the TLD check. I think you are right and we need to relax this check. There is also a PHP bug with the related backendfunction on 64 bit systems. Therfore we turned it off in the demo anyway.

cu
Conny

[lkneschke]

- It should be possible to navigate via TAB/<Shift>-TAB (Changing Tabs via <Ctrl>-Tab).

At least TAB/<Shift>-TAB is working for me when using Firefox 2.0 under linux. I don't have tested other browsers.

- apparently there is a TLD check on the email address. Unforunately it doesn't work correctly: Once you have provided an email with a valid TLD you may ruin it without further complaint by the UI.

Apparently some check at save time (the ruined TLD I assume) has rejected the entry but without feedback to the user.

I am not sure a TLD check is a good thing anyway:
- If TLDs are officially added, all installations must be maintained, so the TLD list must be a preference accessible by the admin.
- Intranets may introduce arbitrary TLDs; another point why the TLD list must be a pref.
- Is it really worth the hassle to test for a valid TLD?

There should always be some feedback, if there are any problems when saving a contact. I'll check if there is a specific problem with the email validation.

The TLD check makes no sense. We just used the email addressfilter from the Zend Framework, supposing it will only check the syntax of the emailadress. I wasn't aware that the emailaddress check is doing also a TLD check. I will see if we can switch to another check to validate the syntax of the emailaddress.

[lkneschke]

The TLD check is now gone too.

[svens]

Hi,

just rechecked the demo. TAB/Shift-TAB is working for me too (I'm using FF 2.0.0.11 on Win XP most of the time); maybe I thought it didn't because it takes a lot of steps invisibly when "caret browsing" is off. Ctrl-TAB will not work in this environment because it is reserved for changing tabs in tabbed browsing mode with FF. But would it be possible to place buttons or s'thing else sensitive to the ENTER key as tab headers? Thus being able to change tabs via TAB/Shift-TAB then ENTER?

Is it possible to have a key navigation for the tree widget (E.g.: UP/Down arrow to navigate forks/leaves; Left/Right to expand/collapse; Enter to select for detail view) ? That would be excellent; good enough even if it would be necessary to add a one key modifier like CTRL or ALT - just use one suitable for Apple too.

Maybe for dialogs with such a plenty of input widgets it would be a good idea to have a two level approach in navigating with the keyboard. If it is possible to intercept keystrokes one could use CTRL or ALT + ">", "<" to jump from one section to another (Topnav, tree, detail; within detail: common area, first widget; then tab 1; tab 2 and so on; with a multi column detail dialog it could bring the user to the first widget of each column) and on the second level Tab/Shift-TAB is used to line things up serially like it already does.

In general it is important to be able to use the interface without a mouse, I think. All experience shows that power users tend to keep their hands on the keyboard if ever possible.

Jm2c

Keep up the exellent work folks!

Svens

[lkneschke]

In general it is important to be able to use the interface without a mouse, I think. All experience shows that power users tend to keep their hands on the keyboard if ever possible.

Yes. I totally agree with you. I'm a power user too.

I just like to postpone the details how to solve this problem, until we reached a point, where we have some more applications in a usable state.