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UI indication of entity field vs. text field

Joe Frayne

July 23, 2009 01:25

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One of the major things everyone seems to have trouble with right away, and consistently remains a point of confusion and frustration, is that it is not easy to tell when a field is supposed to take text, a enum value (like status), an entity (or what type of entity), or a list of entities (or what types of entities).

I think you should definitely have dropdowns for certain fields, like status, or at least a way to configure it so it is a dropdown in certain layouts or for certain fields.

But even when it is not a dropdown, I think there really needs to be some clear visual indication that differentiates text fields and entity fields. This gets even more confusing when certain entity fields (custom/dynamic fields?) do not give any suggestions as you type even valid entity values, making the field behave exactly like a text field.

Thanks!

Joe

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3 comments

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  Joe Frayne July 23, 2009 02:12

  Here's an idea that might help with a big part of this, and solve another issue at the same time.

  When you want to create, say, a new asset and want to add a bunch of shots to that asset, right now it seems that you have to type out each shot, one by one, in the text field. The hints help, but you still have to start to type each one.

  Instead, it would be cool if there were a button next to the entity or multi_entity field that popped up an entity picker, giving you a rich list of entities with thumbnails, etc., that you could pick one or more of the correct entity type, depending on the field type. This would work just like the dialog that pops up when you click the "Link People to this Project" button under the People tab in the Project details page.

  This would not only make it easier to fill out these fields, but it would virtually eliminate the confusion about what type of value(s) the field takes.

  Joe

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  Gavin Greenwalt July 23, 2009 22:17

  This jives with my brain.

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  Stu Aitken July 29, 2009 14:45

  I'm going to wade in on this one as well

  essentially what Joe said :)