Filter bar questions

[Michael]

I like the new filter bar a lot. I'm looking to implement it in an app I'm upgrading, but I wanted to ask some questions about it first.

Based on how it's used in the forum index, it looks like the standard usage of this feature is to have a 'custom' option that opens a menu with all of the old options we used to have to sort and filter the list, plus several 'popular' sorting options. Is that the idea behind the 'Recently Updated', 'Start Date', 'Most Replies' & 'Most Viewed' options, that they are ones people would most often want to select, so you just give them quick links to those options?

I noticed that these hard-coded options are all ones where the sort order would be descending. Was it just a happy accident that it worked out this way, so that you didn't have to muck about with checking both the sort_key and sort_by values to determine the active item, or is there a reason why we'd always want to have hard-coded filters with just a single sort order?

Speaking of showing the active filter, I noticed that you have the forum index defaulting to showing the first item, 'Recently Updated', as being selected if $this->request['sort_key'] is not set. What if the forum's default sort criteria isn't set to show the most recently updated first? Wouldn't that mean that forum list would show the topics in the selected sort order, but the 'Recently Updated' filter object would be showing as highlighted? That wouldn't make sense, as it would be indicating the topics are sorted in a way that they aren't. Is there a reason why you'd always want to ensure one of these is highlighted, even if it doesn't make logical sense?

[Michael]

I hate to bump this, but I'd really like to get some kind of response from IPS about these questions. :)

[bfarber]

Yes - they're shortcuts to what we feel are the most common or useful sorting options, basically. You could put all filters/sorts there perhaps, but the more links and buttons, the more the interface is cluttered. At the same time, you want to make it easy to do the common things (i.e. resort a list of data in a manner that makes sense for that list).

I noticed that these hard-coded options are all ones where the sort order would be descending. Was it just a happy accident that it worked out this way, so that you didn't have to muck about with checking both the sort_key and sort_by values to determine the active item, or is there a reason why we'd always want to have hard-coded filters with just a single sort order?

I think that's just coincidence. I don't think anyone specifically did that on purpose, although I could be mistaken. Note that you could also pass the sort_by parameter in the URL set to "ASC" (I think the value is "A-Z") too - the entire link is hardcoded after all.

Speaking of showing the active filter, I noticed that you have the forum index defaulting to showing the first item, 'Recently Updated', as being selected if $this->request['sort_key'] is not set. What if the forum's default sort criteria isn't set to show the most recently updated first? Wouldn't that mean that forum list would show the topics in the selected sort order, but the 'Recently Updated' filter object would be showing as highlighted? That wouldn't make sense, as it would be indicating the topics are sorted in a way that they aren't. Is there a reason why you'd always want to ensure one of these is highlighted, even if it doesn't make logical sense?

Sounds like a minor bug. May want to report it.