Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Ability to add titles to permanent book lists

Ability to add titles to permanent book list

I have been hired to work on this.

My proposed implementation basically covered the following:

  1. Add an ou setting to enable the warning when adding to a temporary list: opac.temporary_list.warn. This will function so that if it is not set or set to off, then the software behaves as it currently does for adding to a temporary list.

  2. Add an actor usr setting for holding the name of a default book list: opac.my_list.default.

  3. Add a checkbox on the my list interface to indicate that a certain list should be the default list for adding titles.

  4. Modify opac/record and opac/results so that if a patron is logged in their my lists will populate a drop down with the default list selected. Clicking on add to my list will add to the list currently selected in the drop down.

  5. If a logged in patron does not have a list, then the behavior will be the same as for a patron who is not logged in.

  6. If a patron is not logged in, the add to my list will appear the same as it does currently.

  7. Clicking on add to my list will check the ou setting mentioned in above in 1. If that setting is on it will display a warning page to the patron that the item has been added to a temporary list.

  8. There will be a checkbox on this warning page so that if it is checked when the patron dismisses the warning page, a session cookie will be set to indicate that the patron does not want any more warnings about the temporary list.

  9. Logged in users will be able to skip all such warnings via a user setting: opac.temporary_list.warn.

The above was amended at an impromptu meeting held during the 2012 International Conference in Indianapolis:

  • We selected the attached mock-up as the model.

  • We would like some type of border around the dropdown so that it doesn’t blend into the background (a css class for this element will allow us to customize this).

  • The behavior for non-logged-in users will essentially be the same as described in [the] proposal.

  • For logged-in users, the temporary list will appear first followed by the patron’s existing lists. The default list will appear at the top.

  • There will also be an option to "add to new list" at the bottom of the dropdown.

  • There will be a cap on the number of lists that display here. If a user owns more lists, there will be a "See All" option that will lead them to a new page where they can select the right list.

  • There will be a separate css class for the "Temporary List" element and the "Add to New List" element.

So far, I’ve got a working mockup of the menu that uses only CSS. Since it is CSS, it can easily be styled differently from what you see in the screen shot above. In fact, my current mockup does a reverse video effect on the open menu, with white text on a dark green background.

I’ll update my progress as things develop. (Ahem.)

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