Program for Online Deliberation (POD)

Design notes (cobbled together from email/POD discussion, notebook scribbles, and face-to-face meetings between Todd Davies and Brendan O' Connor, 8/6/03)

Contents:
1.Discussion viewer (from email discussion 7/4-7/5/03)
2.Documents box and viewer (from notebook, meetings, and email exchange 7/9-7/11/03 and later)
3.Group home page (from meeting 8/6/03)

*1. Discussion viewer (from email discussion)*

Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 09:26:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Todd Davies <tdavies@csli.stanford.edu>
To: brendano@stanford
Subject: index display/thread reading options, + embedding

Brendan,

I've been thinking about how we display indexes and messages, and I agree
with you that it would be very nice to have the option of reading an
entire thread with one click.  A good way to do this might be just to
allow two ways of viewing each thread in the header pane: collapsed (first
header only with number of messages in parentheses) and expanded (all
headers with indentations).  Forte Free Agent, the Usenet reader I like,
does something like this for header display, but what it doesn't do is
what Google Groups does - let you see all messages in a thread from a
collapsed index.

Here's what I'm thinking the options could look like at the top of the
header pane:

          view by:  thread  date  author  location  (collapse)

The parenthetical option at the end is a toggle for collapse/expand, and
would switch to the opposite of the mode you are in (default=expanded).
As displayed, the mode is expanded and you would see all headers indented
in thread view, all headers linearly in date view, all headers indented
(by thread within an author's posts) in author view, and all headers
indented (by thread within location) in location view.  In collapsed mode,
you would see one link for each thread in each view, with "(x messages)"
next to the link.  Clicking on a link would display all x messages
linearly in the message pane, and mark all of them as read.  A link would
be color-highlighted if any *new* messages had been posted since the x
messages had either been viewed in expanded mode or clicked on in
collapsed mode.  (In expanded mode, a header would be highlighted if that
message had been marked read.)

The "links" in collapsed mode would vary depending on the view: top header
(e.g. "14 I had meant to say...Peter Shane (3 messages)" in thread view;
date only (e.g. "Sunday, July 6, 2003 (15 messages)" in date view;
author-thread-top header in author view (e.g. "75 Brendan O'Connor: Are
you kidding me? (7 follow-ups)") (all follow-ups would be those by the
same author); and location-thread-top header in location view (e.g.
"2.15 I can live with this...Todd Davies (2 messages)").  I hope this is
clear enough.  I'm trying to make the right choices while giving as many
useful options as possible, which I think people will want us to do.