[OSM-talk] New Download Dialog for JOSM

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> 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)

All true.

> 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.

This is, in a limited fashion, already done with the checkboxes "what  
to download"; plugins can add checkboxes here. But the dialog is  
simply not large enough (and can never be) to accomodate everything  
that plugins might want to put there.

> 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 ...

It would be possible, but difficult to find a good way to handle  
various plugins demanding various amounts of room I think. Plus, the  
dialog would always change depending on which plugins you are using,  
which is someting that I think is detrimental to usability - a plugin  
adding a tab is a clear concept, but if plugin installation suddenly  
changes the dialog you were used to...?

> 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 :-)

Good point.

One thing I am unsure about is this: if you have data in JOSM  
already, opening the download dialog will usually set the lat/lon  
values to the currently visible bounding box. This means that  
everything you have put in the input fields is overwritten. Good or bad?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'