

Ask HN: Regarding UI's, need design advice. - epynonymous

what's the best way to represent a list of data in a web UI?  an example being a list of pictures, or a list of contacts?<p>the only thing i can think of is by using a table, but i'm wondering if there's a more simplistic approach without all the heavy duty sorting, paging, etc of a table?
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svnv
I would say it depends on what kind of data you are displaying, how much of it
you need to actually have to display, and what you want the user to achieve
with the data.

What is the desired call to action when displaying your lists? Is there any
way to guess what data the user is looking for so that you can sort the list
showing the most important data first.

For contacts: Do you need to display all available contact information all at
once, or can you just display the contact name (or picture) and have more
details appear when the user clicks or hovers over the contact? Can the
contacts be sorted after how frequently the user communicates with a contact?
Can the user choose multiple contacts and then do some action with them, and
how would this work when the list is spread over multiple pages?

~~~
epynonymous
thanks for the responses everyone, so here's the real impetus behind my post,
i've had this idea brewing in my head for about 7 years, the idea is really
simple: a collaborative spreadsheet that's easier and sexier than a
spreadsheet and structured like a database. i don't like table views in
general, for some things it's ok, like tracking finances, but there's got to
be something more interesting. for the record, i've developed back end
solutions primarily and i just haven't spent enough time contemplating UIs,
but i know what i like and what i don't like.

i was reading an article yesterday on HN about the top reasons why people
don't start their own company, one of which was that people would find
multiple excuses so as to put up a protective buffer so that you could never
finish (paraphrased), well, i've decided that 7 years is too long and this
buffer must go, i must get this idea out there, not for the sake of
necessarily making money (although it will), but for the sake of me needing
something like this tool.

so lists can be very generic in nature, more rigid than say a spreadsheet, but
certainly more flexible than a database. i would have data types like phone
numbers, ipv4/ipv6 addresses, youtube links, enumerations, etc. datatypes
could be created by certain users. i would have readily available schemas that
could also be user generated: grocery list, to do list, contact address book,
bookmarks, medical records, dj event list, my favorite porn star image urls,
defect list, top 10 list, my favorite youtube music videos, product reviews,
car maintenance records, etc.

since users could submit schemas, this would mean that the variations of lists
and their layout could be different. i could imagine a picture list (i.e.
photo album) much similar to a thumbnailed matrix view like all the popular
photo sharing sites. but perhaps for something like a bug list, i'd want to
have something akin to a table view, just because it's sortable, you could
limit the number of shown entries, it's easy to scan from a human eye
perspective.

but i'm not an expert on ui's. here's a thought, what if i could thumbnail
every list entry type, and lay things out like a photo album? would a software
defect list be interesting if it's laid out this way?

i guess table could be default view and offer something like a thumbnail view
if there are imageable aspects of a record like a url, the user could toggle
this.

i really like iphone's interface of having an alphabetically searchable index
on the right side where you could skip, perhaps having indexes based on
several things like the alphabet, date time, most commented, recently updated,
most viewed, etc.

damn, i can see a custom jquery widget needing to be created.

anyone looking for ui work, i don't think i can pay much, this would be self
funded, so when i say i really can't pay much, it's really not going to be
much.

------
slater
Just something to consider if you're dreading implementing sorting & paging:
unless you're dealing with millions upon millions of rows, this can be done
client-side:

[http://www.frequency-decoder.com/2006/09/16/unobtrusive-
tabl...](http://www.frequency-decoder.com/2006/09/16/unobtrusive-table-sort-
script-revisited)

~~~
epynonymous
thanks for sending the link, i will take a look. i was actually using a jquery
plugin called datatables:

<http://www.datatables.net/>

and from a UI perspective, i believe YUI has an infinite scrolling mechanism
that does away with paging, but i feel it's still a little clumsy.

------
kingsidharth
Lists make me think of <http://workflowy.com/> See if that solves your
purpose.

~~~
epynonymous
i saw this last week, but i think this is no different than having a wiki that
automatically provides some sort of flow for the unstructured text that i type
in. i need structure, things need to be easily indexed, almost everything. i
need to be able to perform searches on data like pulling up all ip addresses
that i've recorded in my lists without having to type in the actual address.

i think workflowy is good for random notes, it's an interesting use case, one
that i might use myself. and if you're suggesting that i look at the ui, i'll
take a closer look, i think patterns are an obvious way to figure things out,
however, i still think ui's are a bit behind relative to all the other
technology out there.

