Moodle

Olli, thanks for your suggested improvement. Reassigning to Sam as navigation component lead.

Thanks, Helen. This came up in Martin's keynote so thought I would mention it before I forget.

The general rule is that the interaction style that ignites an action needs to be similar as the action that "undoes" it for minimal distraction. If it opens on click, close it only when clicked. If it opens on hover, close it when the user hovers out (though on timeout so slight movement out of the area accidentally does not make it flicker on and off).

Also, at its current state the dock is impossible to use on touch screens (tested on nokia n900) since those devices do not have a hover event at all.

So regardless of whether the menu activates on hover or not, it should also open on click. When it is opened by clicking it, closing it should happen by clicking again on the item in the dock or anywhere outside the actual navigation menu that opened.

Hi Olli,
Thank you for raising this issue, I have just commit a fix now which makes the following changes:

• Added a close icon to the item's panel when being viewed, adding another means to close the panel.
• Add a mouseleave (hover out) event to close the panel with a delay of 1 second (standard in Moodle) ONLY IF the panel is shown from a hover event.
• Fixed up the event composition for showing, now you can mouse over and click and the panel will show (previously this would cause the panel to open and close immediately)

I've tested this on an iPod touch but perhaps you would be so kind as to test this again on your Nokia Olli

Cheers
Sam

Wow, cool, that was quick!

I can't test it anywhere though. I get "Unknown driver adodb/mysqli" when updated to latest 2.0 on ubuntu. How often does test.moodle.net upgrade to the latest?

I am trying this, though too but I guess it ain't probable I will manage to go through all the trouble of that
http://twitter.com/pilpi/status/8807309158

Managed to test it with qa.moodle.net, thanks Helen for the info that it updates every day.
One glitch with the hover out (see screenshot). The menu that was opened on hover never closes, if the mouse never enters the menu that was opened, but (assuming there is room in the dock below the menu item opened) exits from the dock by moving the mouse down in the dock and then exits the dock not touching the menu that was opened.

This actually happens quite easily, I was doing it accidentally and wondering why the menu only goes away some of the times I try it. Then I realized the above.

Tricky, huh?

Trying to get the click behaviour tested on the Nokia asap.

Oh, the wifi worked after all.

Works ok now on my Nokia N900 by tapping - the icon (to place a module into the dock) is extremely small a target even on a modern-sized screen though, not to talk about the tiny n900 screen with even smaller pixels.

Also the hover out delay should not cancel closing the menu on click outside the menu if the click happens to come before the one second delay has elapsed. The menu should close immediately onclick outside the menu, regardless of how the menu was activated.

Sorry to be a nitpick, It is hard to come to specify things exactly beforehand.

Hi it's me again

About that X icon. Its meaning in Moodle is "delete", in fact it appears on the same module when that module is not in the dock and means delete. So this is pretty sure to confuse users.

• Please place the icon to the right hand corner - this is a very strong convention, which is likely to be the only way to ensure it is understood correctly, and
• change the icon to the one used in the top right corner of YUI dialogs in Moodle - see, for example, http://qa.moodle.net/mod/quiz/edit.php?cmid=34 (works at least when logged in as admin) and click "Add random question ..."

Another thing - I am thinking it should be made possible for the user to make the menu "stick" by clicking the item in the dock even if it is already visible because the user has already hovered on it. Currently seems it is only possible to make the menu stick only on a device that has no hover event.

I am waiting to post this so I don't flood your mailboxes too much, in case I realize something more ...

Ah yes. The "move" functionality does not work when a module is docked. It does move the module internally, but the change does not show until the user undocks the module again. Either it should actually undock the module too, or the icon should not be there when the module is docked as a menu.

Hi Olli,

I've just commit a rather large patch that restructures the dock and resolves many of the remaining points you noted

Cheers
Sam