Hi Brian and All,
Regarding the usability improvements, what
do you think about the following items:
• Auto Connect to the
database upon pressing finish in the new connection wizard (today the required additional
step is annoying). We can add a checkbox in the summary page that is checked if
the connection should be enabled right after the wizard is finished, vendors
will be able to change the default for this checkbox.
• Driver Management- Lets
provide a download option from within the driver page to ease the process of
updating and receiving jars. We should provide an infrastructure for vendors to
implement it, but a basic implementation can be getting the files from the net
(with a given URL). Vendors will be able to add authentications / disclaimer screen
/ (long) agreements screens, etc.
• Connectivity Wizard - Have
the list of all databases for a specific connection prior to the
connection creation (for vendors that support it). Today users should know or ‘guess’
the database name.
If you need more information or you want
to discuss it, feel free to do so.
Roy and (of course) Eden
From:
dtp-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:dtp-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of brian.fitzpatrick@xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008
11:43 PM
To: cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx;
dtp-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx; dtp-pmc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [dtp-dev] DTP Usability
Discussion - Feedback Requested
Hi all...
My
name is Brian Fitzpatrick (aka "Fitz") and I'm the Team Lead for the
Connectivity sub-project of the Data Tools Project (DTP). (Whew! That's a
mouthful.)
We
have begun an effort to work with the community on improving the usability of
DTP Connectivity UI components and tools for the Ganymede release for both
users and adopters and would like to get feedback from the community at large.
Based on some of the BZ entries and comments received on the DTP newsgroup and
mailing lists, we put together a high level plan that describes some of the
issues we're trying to solve.
You
can read that here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Connectivity:Usability:HighLevelPlan
We've
now added a new document to the mix that covers some of the design ideas we're
looking at implementing for Ganymede in DTP.
You
can read this new document here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Connectivity:Usability:High_Level_Design
Please
take a look at these two documents and feel free to ask questions and provide
feedback on the ideas therein. We're looking to improve the UI for all users of
DTP and would like to make it as useful as possible. We understand that the
work we do for Ganymede is a step in that direction and not necessarily everything
will make it into the release. But this will get us started along the right
road for Ganymede and going forward.
Our
plan is to open up the floor for discussions until February 6. At that point,
I'll take a snapshot of where the discussion is and attempt to come up with a
working prototype to demo at EclipseCon 2008. Please don't feel that we're
shutting down the feedback loop at that point -- we just have to draw a line in
the sand so that we can come up with something more than screen shots for the
conference. I expect the conversation will continue long after Ganymede is
done. The usability of a tool is never set in stone.
So
please take a look at the documents above. We're going to try and capture
comments in the comments page (http://wiki.eclipse.org/Connectivity:Usability:High_Level_Design_Comments)
so feel free to write directly on that Wiki page or send comments via the
dtp-dev or dtp-pmc mailing lists or the dtp dev newsgroup.
We
look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks
for your time!
--Fitz
Brian Fitzpatrick
Senior Software Engineer
DTP Connectivity Team Lead
Sybase, Inc.