[aida] Design Ideas for Interacting with Form Elements

[Rob Rothwell]

Hello,

After much help, I have a [primitive] form that I can dynamically add [text
boxes] to from within the application (just click a button, and a new one
shows up), which should work soon for other types of WebFormElements.

And, I can remove them *all* from a button click as well.  I am trying to
figure out a good design for interacting with individual elements.

I am NOT trying to recreate a web page editor!  I just need my users to be
able to add/delete/change data entry elements, with some support for data
type description for exporting data and so on.

The options I could think of were:

1.  Simplest, but not as "pretty"...Hyperlink the field label to a page
where you could adjust various properties.
2.  Prettier?  Can you do the same thing, but update a pane on the page?
This could be nice in the future if I figured out a decent way order/move
them around on the page because you could still see the entire page "layout"
while you made changes.
3.  Modern?  Some kind of Scriptaculous action similar to Nico's "show
code?" (http://nico.bioskop.fr/scriptaculous.html) This would be very
immediate, and would require no "screen real estate," but might make it
harder to see what the page looked like while you made changes.

These would all be good exercises; I just wondered if anyone had any
thoughts on useability from having designed something before.  Also, I have
no idea how to update a separate pane independently in an Aida application,
or if it is even currently possible.

Just wondering.  If left to my own, I would probably try #1 because it is
"standard," or #3 because I think I can find an example of how to do it!

Rob
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