symphonycms/symphony-2 — Issue #904: Duplicator + Collapsible = Accordion?
Author: eKoeS
Created: 2011-11-20 10:04:57+00:00
State: open
Labels: suggestion, to discuss, ux-ui

In another issue @nils-werned [raised](https://github.com/symphonycms/symphony-2/issues/849#issuecomment-2800045) what in my eyes is a serious problem:

> [Nils Werner] The current 2.1 interface itself feels clunky and slow already. I attribute this feeling to the huge size of the draggeable elements, the not immediately visible positioning and target area and the necessity to scroll around when you're dragging across more than just one position.

I think this is mainly due to the fact that you are allowed to expand multiple items beyond the active one. As Nils said, the result is that either you collapse all fields before reordering or you are doomed to scroll until you find the place you want to drop the field to.

I thought that maybe an idea to solve this problem could be to make the duplicator an accordion, that means: _only one expanded item at a time_. The big "but" is that you guys tend to have different habits when it comes to complex widgets like this. That's why I'd like to ask you a few questions about how you use the duplicator (which is also a good way to find a working solution for everybody):

* Do you usually look at more than one field at a time?
* How ofter do you _need_ to expand fields before reordering?
* Is there any _vital_ information except for the field label you need to look at while reordering?
* Did you observe any interesting clients behaviour that would be broken by turning the duplicator+collapsible into an accordion?

My idea was to have an accordion by default: then, if you need to "compare" two or more fields, allow developers to CTRL+click the field (or some other keystrokes) and ignore the accordion rules. But this really depends on how often users need to perform this task. If it's too common and frequent, we are stuck with the current duplicator and the game is already over.

As a sidenote: I'm interested in knowing what led @allen & co developing the S3 duplicator. It's certainly different from the current duplicator (it's an accordion-like widget -- that is, you can only edit/view one field at a time), yet I think it solves our problems in a very elegant way.