HitComparisonReport labels and fieldset titles need rephrasing

[Gregory Vincic]

The report is done in two steps, the main title should read "Hits Comparison Report - Step 1 of 2" in the first step and "Hits Comparison Report - Step 2 of 2" in the second step.

If there are few fields in a fieldset, you could use the fieldset title to tell the user what to do, e.g. in the first step the title should read

"Select Projects for Comparison"

and the labels of the projects should then read

"First Project"

"Second Project"

The selectboxes show the project Id though this is very unintuitive, the labels in the selectboxes should display the project name followed by the id. E.g.

"My Demo Project (Id:101)"

Also if there is only one way to get to the next step the button should only read "Next".

Titles in the fieldsets should not contain

"Hits Comparison Report"

it's already in the main title.

[olle]

Milestone changed from Proteios SE Future Release to Proteios SE 2.15.0.

[olle]

Ticket accepted.

[olle]

Traceability note:

• Comparison of Hits reports was introduced in Ticket #535 (Comparison of Hits reports), and was updated in Ticket #639 (Enhancement of protein list comparisons).
• Quantitative comparison report was added in Ticket #736 (quantitative comparison report).

[olle]

Discussion of issues in ticket description.

Even though there currently does not exist any explicit policy regarding GUI layout and functionality, the aim has been that different parts of the GUI should be consistent. If an explicit policy is decided upon in the future, any decisions made in this ticket may have to be revoked.

Issues in ticket description:

1. Page Titles
   
   Suggestion: A many-step procedure should indicate the current step number and the total number of steps in the page title.
   
   Comment: This is a good idea, as the user can benefit from this information. Currently, the first page has the title "Hits Comparison Report - Project Selection", and the second simply has "Hits Comparison Report". While it might be beneficial for the user to have a descriptive label for the current step in the procedure, this information can be given in the title of the fieldsets.
   
   
2. Fieldset Titles
   
   Suggestion: Fieldset titles should not contain "Hits Comparison Report", as this is already in the page title.
   
   Comment: Good point, this should be implemented.
   
   Suggestion: Fieldset titles should tell the user what to do.
   
   Comment: While it is beneficial for the user to have an indication on the type of input to enter, a fieldset title is more naturally a noun, as it labels the fieldset, and a title such as "Project Selection" is therefore preferred in favor of "Select Projects for Comparison" or "Select Projects".
   
   Increasing consistency between fieldsets (not in ticket description):
   
   While step one has a single fieldset, step two has a separate fieldset for each of the two hit selections, since more parameters are set for each selection. In order to increase consistency between the pages of the two steps, the first page should also have a fieldset for each hit selection, with titles "Hit Selection 1 - Project Selection" and "Hit Selection 2 - Project Selection", respectively. There is then no need for the labels of the individual pop-up menus in the field sets to specify what hit selection they refer to. Fieldset titles for step two should be modified to specify the hit selection number first, e.g. "Filter Settings Hit Selection 1" should be exchanged for "Hit Selection 1 - Filter Settings".
   
   
3. Name of 'Next Step' Button
   
   Suggestion: The name of the next step button should be simply "Next", if there is only one alternative.
   
   Comment: Simplicity is a virtue, but information on what the next step concerns may be beneficial to the user (e.g. if the last step saves the entered settings, or uses them to start a job directly), so this will not be implemented in the first updated version.
   
   
4. Menu Content for Project Selection
   
   Suggestion: The menu items should not be specified by the project id only, but the project name plus the project id.
   
   Comment: It is quite clear that projects should not represented by the database id values only, but this is currently not the case, as project names are used. There seems to be little need for supplementing the project names in the menus with the project id values (the project names and id values are shown under each hit selection on page two for reference).

[olle]

(In [4097]) Refs #730. Refs #535. Refs #287. Hits Comparison Report updated in GUI, to hopefully be simpler and increase consistency:

1. Class/file action/hit/HitsComparisonReportStep1.java in client/servlet/ updated in page title.

2. Class/file action/hit/HitsComparisonReport.java in client/servlet/ updated in page title.

3. Class/file gui/form/ProjectComparisonForm.java in client/servlet/ updated to use one fieldset for each hit selection, when selecting projects, as separate fieldsets are used when selecting filter settings.

4. English dictionary file locale/en/dictionary in client/servlet/ updated with new string keys.

[olle]

Design update:

• Related to making the GUI user friendly, special cases where the GUI might be prone to misinterpretation, should be supplemented with software checks to ensure that input data is valid. An example is when only one gel external id or local sample id exists for a project, which makes the multi-selection boxes resemble pop-up menus or text entry fields. It might not be evident that an item need be selected by clicking on it, for it to used in the comparison. The software should therefore check that at least one gel id or local sample id is selected for each hit selection, and otherwise return to the selection page and display an error message.

• When checking the input String lists from the multi-selection boxes, it is not sufficient to ensure that a list is not null and has a size > 0, since if no available options exist for one of the two parameters in question, the corresponding multi-selection box has a dummy option added with text informing the user that no items are available, e.g. "No gel external ID available". This dummy option has an empty string as value, and will result in a list with size = 1 containing a single item equal to an empty string.

[olle]

(In [4098]) Refs #730. Refs #535. Class/file action/hit/CreateHitsComparisonReportJob.java in client/servlet/ updated to check that at least one gel id or local sample id is selected for each hit selection, and otherwise return to the selection page and display an error message:

1. Protected method void runMe() updated to call new private convenience method boolean stringListHasNonTrivialItem(List<String> stringList) to check that at least one gel id or local sample id is selected for each hit selection, and otherwise return to the selection page and display an error message.

2. New private convenience method boolean stringListHasNonTrivialItem(List<String> stringList) added. It returns true if the list is not null, and contains at least one item that is not null or an empty string, otherwise false is returned.

[olle]

Ticket closed as the topics discussed in the ticket description have been addressed. Further changes in GUI policy or the GUI for hit comparison report will be discussed in the tickets concerning hit comparison reports (Ticket #535 "Comparison of Hits reports" or Ticket #736 "quantitative comparison report"), or in new tickets.