Widgets and nav menu UX should be consistent

[koopersmith]

To keep the widgets and nav menu UX consistent I've ported multi-select-and-drag to widgets. We might want to change the highlight style, but other than that it should be functional.

[koopersmith]

Patch tested in FF, Safari, Chrome, IE7, and IE6 with no errors.

For completion's sake, there is a pre-existing IE6 zIndex bug when dragging items from the available widgets to a widget toolbar.

[azaozz]

I'm failing to see how this is an improvement. Currently we have the simplest possible workflow: drag the widget you need to the sidebar then fill the title and options. For most users this task is performed once after installing and they may not go to the widgets page for years.

Making it possible to pre-select many widgets and drag them together to one sidebar just makes the dragging "choppier" and adds unneeded overhead. Also the workflow becomes a bit more complicated.

This makes some sense for menus although I'm still not convinced it's an improvement there either. Once they set the widgets, nearly all users won't visit the widgets page for a long time. Once they set the menu, most users will visit that page sometimes to add a single item only. So having the simplest most straightforward workflow on these screens and removing any overhead is more important than adding support for very rarely used features.

[nacin]

This came from the UX standpoint of making them match. I think, and kopersmith agrees, that multiple selection for widgets is downright silly, for all of the arguments listed here.

Some of the arguments could apply to menus, but these are inherently different workflows. I think for menus, one-item drag/drop is not ideal. These are much more likely to be done in batch, IMO, and it's fairly intuitive. Going back to checkboxes seems counter-intuitive because of the number of steps it requires -- click checkbox, click add to menu, drag menu item from bottom to where you want it. If it's a concern of stability, that's another story.

Marking this for close and ux-feedback.

[johnonolan]

I think the main thing to consider here from a usability standpoint is that the amount of mouse movement required by the user to pre-select widgets, is equivalent to simply dragging them over individually. There's also the added downside of creating another interface element for the user to understand. The fewer decisions that the user has to make in order to use an interface, the better.

From a UX standpoint, the two section of the admin interface are different enough that an identical workflow won't be expected. Keep in mind that the sidebar isn't even on the same side of the screen when it comes to comparing the widget and menu pages.

[jane]

This is moot as it was decided last night to go back to the original checkbox design for menus and not use dragging from the lists to the menus. Closing.