Which is the best design practice for edit data in RIA?

Question

First of all it is a UI design question!

Which is the best design practice for edit data in RIA, for example in Flex or Silverlight?

I would like to show customer's details, but there will be an edit window, than the datas of customer will be editable.

I would like to show a new form where the data can be edited. What is the simplest way to show this form. I can make my ui tabbed, so I can open the form in a new tab, or I can open the form in a popup/modal dialog (Save-cancel). Maybe I can use in line editing.

What is the most user friendly solution in a Silverlight or Flex GUI? What is your opinion?

Thanks!

Answer 1

After creating several Flex based apps, I personally prefer to do all record editing in a modal popup regardless of the record size for a few reasons:

1. It keeps the user experience consistent. When a user sees a datagrid with records they have the ability to edit, they know it's going to come up in a modal pop up.

2. It gives you more control over the input form. You can add validators, formatters, other popups, etc. This is also possible with inline editing, but it can be more complicated and cumbersome.

3. If you're using Mate or Cairngorm or some other MVC framework, it allows you to dispatch your custom events and handle the edited record however you need to with greater ease and flexibility.

Answer 2

I am a flex developer, so in this case i'd have used flex ofcourse, i don't know abt silverslight, in flex u can do this very easly, make an edit button, and then on the click of that button, open something like (modal window in flex, it's a container), in this you can create a form, and collect all the data in this window, which u want to reflect in the main page, we also have [Bindable] things, so you can also make two things refelctable, like if u have been editing , so those changes can b reflected side by side on your main page,

so i'd say Flex has the power(my opinion):-), (silverlight may b gud too, i don't know)

hav a gr8 time

Ankur

Answer 3

We started with mostly inline editing. Of course it means that you have few fields and they are numeric/text/combo. Anything more complex is better served in a dialog.

However we now using only dialogs, since they are cleaner and we found it more convenient for regular users. Power users will always prefer inline editing but they are a minority.

So it depends on your data, users and frequency of changes/additions.