LabelingArea

The LabelingArea is a block that appears at the very bottom of the DetailView. Most of the wireframe below is obsolete, but the LabelingArea, marked "see also" looks pretty good:

The LabelingArea is a place which shows all the collections of which this item is a member. This area is an expandable area that has PopupMenu blocks that present the collection labels. Each block shows a tuple: category, itemName. In the expanded form, it has room for several labels in the lower portion, and one text line in the upper portion (which always reads "see also"). In the contracted form it is just the single line of static text reading "see also". The expansion indicator is positioned in the lower right corner of this block. When expanded, the size of this block is determined by the number of labels in the block: All labels are shown, up to some maximum number. When the maximum is reached a scroll bar appears to allow scrolling the area.

Each LabelBlock allows the user to switch between the known collections and items. These are all text menu items of the form "collectionName: itemName". There will be a way to add new collections or items either through a fixed EditText field, or through the PopupMenus themselves. We'd like to have the PopupMenu have a "New" item, which presents the EditText capability when selected. In the future Drag and drop gestures will also be used to put labels on the LabelingArea. At that time Drag can be used to reorder the labels.

Questions:

• Does the expanded/contracted state stick with the DetailView or stick with the ContentItem when switching between items? Default is contracted?
• Are the labels always text? Can they be colored? Can they be arranged horizontally as well as vertically?

-- DonnDenman - 03 Jun 2004