[thelist] idea A: step-by-step (was Re: stupid user interface usability question: how to design a parallel set of pages that users with to click 'save' before going on)

[张韡武]

A suggestion from colleague is I can rename the button to "save and
continue" or "next step", and user clicking on this button are bought to
the next tab, which I already did. He further suggested changing the row
of tabs to something like this:

[tab1] -> [tab2] -> [tab3] -> [tab4]

If you are in tab1, only tab2 is clickable, which gets same result as
clicking "save and continue". If you are in tab2, only tab3 is
clickable, and so like.

If I take this suggestion, this works perfectly for new users entering
data the first time, but for experienced users, they cannot jump from
one tab to another freely. Also for users who goes back to this page in
order to modify existing data, the user may hate to go through each tab
to find the information he wish to modify. Thus this suggestion (by far
my understanding) still need to be improved.

在 2006-07-19三的 13:52 +0800，张韡武写道：
> Hello. I have designed my user interface this way:
> 
> gopher://sdf.lonestar.org/g/users/weiwu/interface_example_01.png
> 
> This user interface turns to be a bad design, the top row of 'tabs'
> gives users impression that they could just click the other tab without
> saving the content and later click 'save' to save changes made on all
> tabs, but actually, each page of content must be saved separately,
> because the 'tabs' are simply anchors graphiced to be like tabs. If you
> click on second tab, you get prompted if you wish to navigate away from
> this page *without* saving, this again create usability trouble, some
> user click 'OK' thinking the modification is then saved, but actually
> the modification is discarded.
> 
> Currently it is not possible to design the interface to hold all
> contents in one single page (that is, provide a javascript-emulated row
> of tabs, once the user click one tab, only content in that tab shows up,
> other content are hidden by using javascript), nor can I adopt ajax
> technology for that involve relatively big change on the design. What is
> the best way to
> 
>       * prevent users thinking they could leave a page without saving,
>         and motivate the users to click save button before navigating to
>         another tab;
> 
> 
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