Clearer Factories [was Multiple "add" options]

[mvahowe]

Looking at today's reported issue changing countries, I noticed that this part of the interface is a little confusing. In the attached screenshot, we have a "next" button labelled "Add country" and then "Add country" as a sibling of "country". I don't think "add country" should be on the "next" list because it's not part of a straight-line journey though the metadata. ie, the buttons here should be "<<Language" and "Type >>". But you have exactly that on the line below so, actually, maybe we don't want those buttons at all for factory nodes. Right now the interface actively invites users to create new countries, which is almost always not what is needed.

[mvahowe]

I think we need a slightly bigger reworking than my original suggestion. Some of this may relate to the arity stuff I know you are looking at. Attached, my crude mock-up of what I think we need on the screen. So

• Show the arity to the user (it's easy enough to turn 1, ?, * and + into comprehensible text)

• Show any arity error at that level too, ie "At least one country required but none found"

• Put the add button at the level of the container, not inside each of the instances. (So at the "countries" level in this case)

• "country US" is absolutely not required, so remove the * (I'm trying not to make a political joke here.)

• Maybe add a tooltip for key fields along the lines of "This field cannot be edited because it is a key. If the key is wrong, create a new X with the correct key and then delete this one."

[mvahowe]

So I think an arity error in this case would look like this (with more red).

[ericpyle]

@mvahowe I should review if my current UI is good enough for now, or if there's important confusion that still needs to be avoided. I do think I at least should put some heirarchical/parent-tree (*) breadcrumbs on how to find required fields (even if they are already filled in). Right now, I just show things if they are missing/invalid.