[ckan-dev] How to display more information on a resource?

[David Read]

David,

You're could say that you're designing the 'default' or 'most
flexible' package display template and edit form. This is what's
currently used for ckan.net, for people to play with what fields they
need.

As people start to have a strong idea what fields they want - such as
the http://ckan.net/group/lodcloud people - then we should think about
customising their display template and edit form for their packages.
So don't worry about displaying or editing for this case - we can do
custom work for complicated cases.

So, back to the default case. You've seen that it's difficult to give
people both the flexibility and handle the UI wonderfully for few and
many fields. I suggest you focus on handling up to say a dozen
columns. And if people really want more then we'll sort out the UI
when/if it happens.

*Displaying* a package: how about making all the table columns thin
enough to display them all, truncating cells rather than
wrapping/scrolling them, and provide the full value on mouseover? Even
if you only see the first few characters, then you have a good idea of
the value. The description field has become a bit of a dumping ground
for other data, so you could perhaps make all columns the equal width.

*Editing* a package: a table with a scrollbar with a button to add
more fields seems fine to me. Editors will use the scroll bar in their
hunt for the values they want to change, having seen what values are
there when the package is displayed / previewed.

Team members like James are v. quick on the JQuery, so do ask if you
want someone to help. The hard part of this is probably the model
code.

David

On 17 January 2011 20:58, David Raznick <kindly at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
>
> I have been looking at ticket 862 .  Technically it should not be too
> difficult if we go down the same route as "package extras" and "group
> extras" which have extra key value pairs.
>
> However,  I have no good idea how we can display this extra information.
>
> Currently the resources are in a 3 column table, which has an add button and
> the option to reorder.
>
>  * If we can add arbitrary new columns then the table will grow too wide and
> look bad.
>  * We could add a horizontal scrollbar, which would look ugly and obscure
> the new fields.
>  * We could change it to a "continuous form" instead of a table but that
> would muck up reordering.
>  * We could add a javascript popup of key value pairs (on hover or click of
> a info icon) that would look good but will not gracefully degrade without
> javascript.
>
> We also need a way to view the extra resource info in "view" mode, which is
> currently just a table of 3 columns.
>
> Has anyone got a good ideas about how this should be done?
>
> Thanks
>
> David
>
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