SELF SERVICE 2.0 #

The Self-Service 2.0 layout was designed and implemented with the following technical goals in mind:

1. Should be free of the screen realty and browser-sizing issues, which plagued the former Self-Service layout.
2. Should conform to current web-standards and trends.
3. Should be compatible across standards-based browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla FireFox 2.
4. Prototype should conform to system standard screen resolution of 800x600.

Layout #

The first thing the user will notice is the layout itself. The over-crowding of boxes in the action bar, the row of ambiguous Business Role icons and side navigation bar have all been removed.

Maximizing Screen Realty #

Several things were done in the layout to maximize screen realty including trimming the Action Bar and Business Roles layouts and changing the side navigation bar into a pop-up.

The Business Roles layout is now a widget, which displays the current business role and displays a drop-down menu of all available business roles when a mouse pointer hovers over it.
The Action Bar layout has been trimmed down to only display application-level buttons. The form action buttons (Save, Revert and Print) were relocated to just above the top-right corner of the content area and will be visible when a form is open and hidden when the splash screen is displayed.

The Show Navigation menu button was relocated to the immediate left of the content title.

The Side Navigation bar has been replaced by a floating menu, which is hidden by default. The floating menu is “brought up” by clicking the Show Navigation button. The navigation menu floats over the content area and will display a sub-menu when your cursor hovers over an item in the parent menu. The floating menu is dismissed by clicking anywhere else in the layout.

Handling Various Browser Sizes and Screen Resolutions #

The former Self-Service layout was “liquid”, meaning it would stretch or contract to fit the dimensions of the browser window. Various browser sizes and screen resolutions often cause issues in such layouts including the unwanted wrapping of web objects or over-expanded text areas.
This issue is addressed and resolved in the prototype layout by making it a “fixed-width” type layout. Whether the browser size or screen resolution is at 800x600 or 1600x1200, there will be no contraction or expansion issues.

Cross-Browser Compatibility and Web Standards #

Browser compatibility and following Web Standards actually go hand-in-hand. In order to be compatible with Mozilla FireFox 2, all HTML, CSS and JavaScript had to conform to current Web Standards.
The process of ensuring browser compatibility also involved making the layout completely frameless and replacing all HTML TABLE elements with DIV and SPAN elements. In addition, all HTML is completely styled using CSS to ensure a clear separation between style and content.

Remove the Frame but Keeping the Functionality #

It is also worth mentioning that although we didn’t want to work with Frame elements we wanted to keep the Frame functionality as it is very convenient to keep the application header static.
The content area sizes and re-sizes itself dynamically relative to the height of the browser window to ensure that the full height of the browser window is utilized.

Self Service 2.0 Walk Through #

Technical Features #

• Browser independent with compliance testing done on Mozilla Fire Fox 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and Apple Safari
• Follows W3C standards
• Implements WEB 2.0 features
• Highly interactive UI (User Interface) leveraging AJAX throughout application
• Frameless architecture
• Minimal usage of HTML tables allowing for style to be separated from content
• Application Style Sheets and Java Scripts have been completely re-organized into smaller specialized files for each different UI component
• Conversion of JSP’s into Java Servlets to leverage Java application architecture

Application #

• Vertical will snap to the bottom of the browser window
• Side menu has been moved to conserve horizontal space
• Form specific actions (Save, Revert, Print) have been removed from top action bar
• Role bar now takes up less space
• Clicking on the Role bar will take you back to the splash screen for that role
• Clicking on the Logo (top left) will take you back to the splash screen

Role Bar #

• Hover on Role bar brings up vertical drop down
• To switch roles, the cursor becomes a hand to indicate that roles can be selected
• Shows list of all available business roles, with no limit to the amount of roles
• Role descriptions make selecting role intuitive

Side Menu #

• Dims and disables background when menu is visible
• No limit to the amount of items the menu can hold (previous SS world had height and width restrictions)
• Takes up very little space and is always visible
• Cursor switches to hand to indicate that items can be selected

Splash #

• Staggered Splash form loading (e.g. Pages load immediately; content loads as it is ready)
• Improved styling
• Hovering on functions shows the form name in the Status Bar – good for AS, PS
• Stored preferences for Splash menu nodes visibility by SS person (Identity,Candidate)

Better Usage of Loading Animation #

• Switching roles
• Calling a form now uses animation
• Loading Splash content
• Clicking on actions
• Dialog loading
• Clicking from tab to tab

Find Area #

• Searches are now dynamic (no more clicking on search button)
• Clear will restore the full list
• Find list is updated without refreshing entire screen content

Fonts #

• Form fonts are set to 10 pixels (old SS was 11 pixels)
• Tahoma (old SS was 11 pixels Arial)
• Tahoma is a narrower font (old SS was Arial)
• Smaller narrower fonts translates to more screen content, especially at 800 by 600

Dialogs #

• Completely revamped to eliminate screen flashing
• Background dims to draw attention to dialog
• LOV’s and Calendars are layered more smoothly
• Ability to drag the dialogs

LOV’s #

• Searches reduce list dynamically
• Completely revamped to eliminate screen flashing

Tabs #

• Improved UI
• Dynamic Loading

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Notes #

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