[ckan-discuss] thedatahub.org - some UI feedback

[Rufus Pollock]

On 19 September 2011 21:56, Tim McNamara <tim.mcnamara at okfn.org> wrote:
> I've been adding some data to thedatahub.org and was struck by a few
> things relating to resources.
>
> Generally
> --------------
>
> Resource's name field comes first but is not used by the UI to render
> the listing. The description field is used in full, but only has a
> single line for the UI, meaning that description becomes the de facto
> name.

It was already on the list to use the name rather than the description
by default but did not make it in RC1 release last week. This is now
done and should be deployed asap:

<https://bitbucket.org/okfn/ckan/changeset/1aab499d73db>

> I kept pushing the green plus icon to add a dataset. This icon

Which green plus icon? Do you mean the one on right? The expand icon
is on left and is not great.

I note the green icon is only present for new resources. Personally,
I'm not sure this is the best icon since it connotes added rather than
this is newly added but I'm not sure it is a huge issue.

> actually performs the function of expanding a resource to show its
> details.  If a resource is expanded, that green plus shouldn't be
> visible/possibly greyed out.
>
> Very long URLs break the UI.

Can you provide a screenshot.

> Linking to a file
> -----------------------
>
> Why can't an HTTP head request fill in this form?

Simple answer: you can't make Cross Domain requests in browsers to
random other domains so you can't have frontend js get this info. Of
course you could write an API in CKAN but then you have to worry about
things like domains that takes 10s to respond etc. Is it really worth
the hassle (we do already have a QA system that operates out
out-of-band and will go and get info on the resource and enter it).

> Upload
> -----------
>
> This is auto filled. Yay. Buy, why is the MIME type being duplicated
> in the format field? Format should almost always be the file
> extension. Even if MIME type is more precise, file extensions are much
> more familiar to a general/novice user. The format is what is
> displayed to the user. Therefore, we should probably display what
> makes sense to the user.

I think that is a good point that Format field is like 'human
readable' mimetype and so should not use the mimetype. Options:

a) Use extension as you suggest
b) Leave blank and let user fill (now have autocomplete to guide the user)

Which is better?

Rufus