The MarkupBar

The MarkupBar is a block that appears in the DetailView.

The MarkupBar has a set of convenient shortcuts packaged as controls appearing in a tool bar. Each control looks like a simple icon, without a caption beneath. The controls appear in one of three places: The left side provides coarse-level processing, the middle portion provides email-specific status, and the right side provides lightweight tagging of items. Some of these controls are buttons, some are merely indicators (e.g. the email status portion), and some are popup menus (aka combo boxes). The popup menus have a little triangle icon beneath them to indicate that something will popup.

Starting from the left, here are the MarkupBar controls, and how they work:

• TriagePulldown - this TogglePulldown Block has items: Processed, Processing, Deferred Until. When Deferred Until is selected there is a Tickler shown in the DateTime section of the CoreArea. Processed, Deferred Until, and Processing are mutually independent states simply reflecting a process progress attribute.

• SharingButton - this Toggle-action button activates the FromAndToArea and the MessagesArea.

• TaskStamp - Single-action button that converts the item to (or from) a Task. Looks the same regardless of whether the item is currently a task.

• CalendarStamp - Single-action button that converts the item to (or from) a Calendar item. Looks the same regardless of whether the item is currently a calendar item.

• ShouldReplyButton - this Toggle-action button activates a tickler for replying in the body of the DetailView where???

• EmailFlags are a set of simple indicator icons that show if the email has been replied-to, forwarded, etc. If the item is not an email then these bits are not present. If it is an email, then only the ones that are true are shown. These items are placed in an absolute position within the EmailFlags space instead of being resized when individuals appear or disappear.

• PrivateButton - Toggle-action button that marks an item private.

The MarkupBar has a fixed vertical size. When resized horizontally it puts extra space on either side of the EmailFlags.

Questions:

• The CalendarStamp is specified to be a TogglePulldown. Does this mean that the user stamps an item as a Calendar item, and at the same time selects from: Busy, Tentative, Free? Is there any way to un-stamp it as a calendar item?
• Should the individual email flags get re-layed out, or stick to an absolute position in their section of the bar?
• What does it mean to Mark an item as "private"? Does this simply disable sharing on the item? The lock icon suggests to me that no more changes should be allowed, but this is not true, right?

-- DonnDenman - 09 Jun 2004