[Seaside] Suggestions for related complex data?

[Avi Bryant]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Markus Fritsche wrote:

> I'm writing to ask for Ideas how to set related complex
> data? Say, I have a record "article", and want to set the
> relation to a distributor, how do I do it best?
> Known possibilities:
>
> 1. a selection list (selectFromList:selected:callback:label)
>    with a button for adding new distributors from the
>    article form.
> 2. a link to my distributor-listing application, causing a
>    "select" button on the right side to appear.

I tend to prefer (2).  As you say, the user is already familiar with that
application, and can probably navigate quickly in it to the item they
want, whereas beyond 10 items or so, select boxes are very cumbersome.

However, is there any reason you can't have both?  Rather than a select
box + an "add" button, why not have a select box + button that takes them
to the full distributor app if they want?  That way if they can quickly
pick the one they want from the list, great, otherwise they get the full
generality (and can presumably add new ones from the distributor app as
well).

> Are there other possibilities (javascript, popups)?

In terms of maintaining context and not interrupting the "flow", it seems
like it's sometimes nice for such things to come up in smaller, separate
windows (I don't always like this approach, but it can work well in some
cases).  I wonder if I could play some javascript and frame games that
would allow something like:

  distributor := self call: (WAExternalWindow on: (DistributorApp new))

This would pop the DistributorApp up in a new browser window (presumably
w/o menu bar or buttons), that would close, and update the main window,
whenever the DistributorApp sent #answer: (ie, whenever you chose a
distributor).

Thoughts?

Avi