Re: [Gnumed-devel] test web app to try out

[Tim Churches]

catmat wrote:

> catmat wrote:
>
> > ( you can popup browser windows in mozilla which don't have back 
> > buttons).
> Ah , so that's why Oscar  has the annoying popups ?!

Yes, hiding the browser navigation controls and hoping the user doesn't 
work around that as Liz suggests is one strategy, perhaps a reasonable 
one for apps with a limited audience who can be trained to use them 
correctly.

What we are doing with out NetEpi Case Manager app is recording a graph 
(in teh mathematical sense of connected nodes) of application states, 
each identified by a unique number. If the user replays or revisists a 
previous browser page, then app is set to the corresponding state.  What 
we still need to do is warn the user about what they have done by 
displaying an additional message on the page, which suggests that they 
might do better to use the **application** navigation buttons (OK, Back, 
Cancel etc) instead of the browser navigation buttons etc, and to ask if 
they really do want to clobber previous changes to a record. But at 
least the app doesn't throw an exception due to inconsistent states. 
Detecting whether clobbering will take place, or whether the use of teh 
browser navigation is innocuous, takes quite a lot of logic code for 
each app page. Building robust Web apps is, we've found, a lot more 
complex than building robust GUI apps.

Tim C