This section describes the design choices regarding all views in the program and the functionality they contain.
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Figure 3.19: The Rich Text Editor from EPF modified with buttons for creating references
3.6.1 Element Explorer
Element Explorer is placed in the left side of the application and is a tree-view representation of all open elements. The original layout of the Element Explorer View contained the tree-view and nothing else. In the case study in Section 5.1 the need for being able to sort and filter the tree was discovered (more on sorting and filtering in Section 3.7.1). A checkbox is placed at the top of the view and from this the user can switch the alphabetic sorting on and off. A text-box is placed next to the checkbox. In the text-box the user can enter a string which is used to filter the tree. The filtering runs simultaneously with the entering of the string.
3.6.2 Glossary View
The Glossary View is placed in the bottom right corner of the application. The purpose of the view is to present a glossary entry to the user, and provide a way to browse through the entries of a glossary. Browsing in a glossary is an easy and fast way of finding and reading about an entry. The need of this functionality was discovered during the case study in Section 5.1.2.2. The glossary views placement makes it possible to have an editor open and use the comments view or associations view, while looking at entries.
The original layout of the Glossary View contained very little functionality. As said the purpose was to show an entry’s information: the term, its abbreviations and synonyms and its description. A button, ”Edit Entry”, was placed next to the shown entry and provided the ability to edit the entry by opening the glossary entry editor described in Section 3.5.6.
The layout created to include the browse functionality is more advanced. At the top of the view a button makes it possible to browse to the previous entry and the button in the bottom is used to browse to the next entry. The layout provides a sneak peak at the previous and the next entry by showing the term of each in the buttons. Since it is possible to have multiple glossaries in one or several projects, the user is informed with the name of the active glossary, that is the glossary that contains the shown entry. Figure 3.20 shows a screenshot of the Glossary View.
Figure 3.20: Screenshot of the Glossary View
3.6.3 Comments View
The Comments View makes it possible to comment on an active element. Com-menting on work made is a useful way of reviewing and providing feedback, which is needed in group work where the workload is often divided between the group members. It could also prove useful for a teacher or teaching assistant when reviewing the students work.
The Comments View is placed in the upper right corner of the application in a tabular order with Associations View 3.6.4. The view contains a table in which the comments are placed and edited. A comment consists of:
• Date - An autogenerated time stamp of when the comment was created
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• Author - A textfield in which an author can be assigned to the comment
• Comment - The text that makes up the comment
• Status - The status of the comment, which can be set to: Unresolved, Resolved, Obsolete and Notice
The table has a column for each of the listed items. A row can be added with the
”Add Comment” button and comments selected are deleted with the ”Delete”
button. In the top of the view the currently active element is written.
3.6.4 Associations View
The Associations View is meant to provide an overview of all the associations an active element has to other elements. In the orignal design associations was a part of the persona editor, described in Section 3.5.2. In the case study the need for being able to have a list of associations in all editors was discovered.
The choice was to create a view to show all associations of the currently ac-tive element in the editorview. The associations view has a list with the three columns. The first column displays the icon for the type of element the associ-ation belongs to. The second is the elements name, the same that is displayed in the tree-view in Element Explorer described in section 3.6.1. The last is a field to enter any remarks regarding the association to the element. Double clicking on an element in the table opens the respective element’s editor, for easy navigation.
The Associations View is placed together with the Comments View, described in 3.6.3. This is chosen since the two views are similar in the aspect that all elements are able to use them and the user does not depend on having both active at the same time. In the top of the view the currently active element is written.
3.6.5 The Search View
From the case study the need to be able to search for a word or term and get a list of results appeared. When searching for a word a list of result is generated.
The search view is responsible for displaying the list of results. The list is displayed in a tree structure similar to the one in Element Explorer described in Section 3.6.1. Double clicking on one of the search results in the view opens the editor for the element containing the result and marks the result.
The search view is as a standard not visible in the application. When searching for something the view will open in the lower right corner as a tab together with the glossary view (Section 3.6.2) and display the results.