[OSM-talk] New Download Dialog for JOSM

[Ulf Lamping]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Dear JOSM users,
>
>    I would like to solicit your opinion on a new design of the JOSM 
> download dialog.
>
> It is not really a super big change but since the download dialog is a 
> central element of everyday work, maybe you have some input here.
>
> The idea is to make the dialog slimmer by introducing tabs - one for 
> the main lat/lon input, one for bookmarks, and one for the world 
> chooser (is anyone using that at all - maybe we can drop it altogether?).
>
> The most important aspect of this is going on behind the scenes; 
> plugins will now have the opportunity to add their own tabs (I am 
> thinking the slippy map plugin adding a tab where you can enter tile 
> numbers for download, or a plugin using David Earl's place search to 
> determine which area to download). Plugins will also be able to 
> replace existing tabs altogether, so if someone wants to provide a 
> Better Bookmark (tm) plugin replacing the existing bookmarks, that's 
> entirely possible without changes to JOSM.
>
> I have attached a screenshot of the download dialog, and you can also 
> try it in action if you get this JOSM version:
>
> http://www.remote.org/frederik/tmp/josm-new-download.jar
>
> I intend to introduce these changes into the production version 
> quickly, so that I can then provide a new slippy map plugin with tile 
> number download support.
>
Well, you'll have to make a usability trade off here.

Common drawbacks of such a tabbed solution:

a.) you don't see all options at first sight -> more complicated to 
understand (at least) for newbies
b.) more clicks to get to "your" settings tab (maybe only one click - 
but usability is also to get to results with as little effort as possible)
c.)  it's very hard to understand the "interactions" between the fields 
in the tabs when you don't see them (e.g. if you'll select a bookmark, 
the bounding box values will be filled)

An advantage is, if you split the GUI fields into thematically tabs it 
might be easier to grasp the grouping of the GUI items - but that can 
also be achieved by better visually grouping like using frames (old 
style) and spacing (new style).

So you'll make the dialog more complicated to use in the sake of easier 
to be implemented extensibility.

It might be a better idea to better group things in the existing dialog 
and find a mechanism to extend/exchange groups of the current dialog. 
However, this is the way I would do it with GTK, I don't know if that 
make things much more complicated in the JAVA way to implement it ...

Regards, ULFL

P.S: Will the dialog remember which tab was used the last time? It would 
be really annoying if you have to get to the right tab first each time 
you'll open the dialog :-)