Show Me The Info

Last night I spent some time working on the design of my new logistics system. I’m developing from the ground up.

One question that I couldn’t easily break open was this .. What the point of an update screen?

Now, that flies in the face of the typical Browse/Update paradigm. At least, it seems to.

What’s the point of an update screen?

I would think, it’s so the user can do two things.

1. Insert/Change/Delete a record (the Delete doesn’t really fall in here)

and,

2. View the Information.

The browse should account for 2. at least a little bit. The more relevant information you have on a browse, the less the user has to go into the update screen just to check on something.

But number one, 1., can be dealt with, at least in some respects, in other ways.

The specific method I’m thinking of is the Right-Click.

A while back Bill showed me the power of the right-click inside a system, and consequently added it into my brain as another "way to get things done".

I’ve had another couple of days to ponder this. A great deal of info gathering will fall on the hands of the browse. Further, many of the methods we traditionally put into the update screen (child records, assignments, linking) can happen via right-click.

The update screen still has it’s uses. Particularly for straight-forward (what people expect) data entry, and information gathering of obtuse little fields that rarely are needed.

That’s my general thoughts on the matter, right or wrong.

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