[jira] Commented: (DIRSTUDIO-234) Greyed out menu items should have a tool tip explaining *why* they're greyed out

["Stefan Seelmann (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DIRSTUDIO-234?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#action_12541950 ] 

Stefan Seelmann commented on DIRSTUDIO-234:
-------------------------------------------

Hi Alan, 

thanks for the report.

In general we try to use the schema of the LDAP server to determine which attributes are editable and which are not. But you are absolutely right, there is no information why an action is disabled. 

I also thought about the GUI "paradigm", I think there are three ways:
1) Help the user to do only things that are allowed or make sense in a concrete context. The problem is then that if the schema is not good or if the implementation has bugs the user can't do what s/he wants to do.
2) Let the user do anything and let the server throw errors back to the client
3) A mix of both: Warn the user in the tool if s/he does an insane action (and say why this action is insane), but if s/he confirms the action is sent to the server

Currently we use the 1st way. I think the best would be the 3rd. 

Thoughts?


> Greyed out menu items should have a tool tip explaining *why* they're greyed out
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: DIRSTUDIO-234
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DIRSTUDIO-234
>             Project: Directory Studio
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: studio-ldapbrowser
>    Affects Versions: 1.0.1
>         Environment: OSX 10.4
>            Reporter: Alan Batie
>
> All GUIs should have a tool tip explaining why something is greyed out and what needs to be done to make it active (and it needs to be *useful* information, not just "it doesn't apply" or "you're not allowed to do that now" --- it's obvious the *application* thinks that because it's greyed out).  In this case, I did a search against our ldap server, found an attribute that needed removing and did so.  Then I did another search.  This time the font changed to italic, and when I go to delete an attribute, Delete is greyed out.  There is no clue anywhere as to what's going on.  I searched in help for the ldap browser, and found very little.

-- 
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
-
You can reply to this email to add a comment to the issue online.