Arantor

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Permissions UI
« on November 4th, 2012, 11:33 PM »
I've not been happy with the permissions UI for some time. There are a number of things I dislike about it.[1]

So, I have a suggestion. I haven't mocked it up or anything yet because it's still mentally a WIP but just hear me out.

You've probably seen the Detailed Reports area? The one where you get a list of every group and every permission? Well, if you're not familiar with it, I've attached an example.

What I'm imagining is essentially that screen, but with subdivisions for groups of permissions, sort of like in the Simple mode. So that you'd be able to see at a glance which groups have which permissions.

As far as changing it goes, I've had various ideas about that, but the one I'm happiest with would be where you could click on the cell you wanted to change it and it would pop up some option to let you change it. I'm thinking it would expand that cell to include either a dropdown (for yes/no/never), or slightly more controversially, two tickboxes, Allow and Deny.[2]

I'm not really fussed about the exact way the permissions selection bit would be, I'm more interested whether the overall deal of seeing permissions at once would be worth pursuing. As far as post count permissions goes, you'd have a button to switch from groups to post count groups and back, because there's only so much room on screen for it.

What do people think about this in general? Would like any clarifications?
Posted: November 4th, 2012, 11:31 PM

Note also this might lead to the beginning of phasing out of the detailed reports - there's no need to have the report if you can get the same information elsewhere.
 1. The fact there's a Simple and a Classic view, when neither are particularly wonderful. The fact that deny permissions is extra steps to enable. I could go on.
 2. You have two tickboxes, allow and deny. Ticking the allow box gives the permission, ticking the deny box means deny as we know it normally, leaving both blank means not granting it, as we would call disallow. If you're unclear, this is what Windows uses for assigning things like sharing permissions. It works.

 detailed_reports.png - 28.48 kB, 962x567, viewed 174 times.

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live627

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Re: Permissions UI
« Reply #1, on November 4th, 2012, 11:41 PM »
I think that's a wonderful idea. Have you thought of what happens if an admin decided to create 20-odd groups?
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Arantor

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Re: Permissions UI
« Reply #2, on November 4th, 2012, 11:44 PM »
They'd get a wide screen, just as they would with reports.

In reality, I don't think most forums have that many groups. Even the forum I have with a very weird configuration only manages to hit 12 non administrator groups. Groups where there are based on others wouldn't need an extra group.

I will note that it is this problem which stopped me suggesting it ages ago but in the end I figured I probably didn't care enough to figure out a solution I actually liked (which, ideally, would be much like Excel's 'Freeze' feature)

live627

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Re: Permissions UI
« Reply #3, on November 4th, 2012, 11:49 PM »
Oh, if reports has hat behavior, I shouldn't worry. They can get a 1080p monitor :P

Arantor

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Re: Permissions UI
« Reply #4, on November 4th, 2012, 11:54 PM »
It's a table ;) but like I said, I have a forum with 12 groups and it fits acceptably well in 1000px wide, I see no reason why this shouldn't.
Posted: November 4th, 2012, 11:51 PM

Here's another example, with a lot more groups.

 detailed_reports_2.png - 23.72 kB, 970x501, viewed 199 times.

Re: Permissions UI
« Reply #5, on November 6th, 2012, 01:11 AM »
I'm assuming the comments in http://wedge.org/pub/bugs/7663/delete-member-does-not-delete-pm-rules/msg283026/#msg283026 were really meant for this thread.
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Which leads me to two remarks about permission copying:

- we should make it clearer in the permissions page what the difference between 'inherit' and 'base' is (I actually had to go through the source code to be sure I was going to 'copy' them from the Regular Members table!)
That's one of the many myriad things that could actually be fixed by this logic. Only groups that have their own distinct permissions get shown.
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- when copying permissions from another membergroup, also copy their media profile permissions!!
i.e. go through all media permission profiles, get the original membergroup's permissions, and copy them for the new membergroup.
I'm thinking that the core permissions stuff should be overhauled to include media permissions as well so there's one place for all kinds of permissions.
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Do you think you can do it, Pete? I'm way too uncomfortable with permission code. But OTOH, here it's mostly media permissions, which you may not be as well versed into. My knowledge about them is not perfect either -- that feature was broken by Dragooon, and I had to learn how to use it first. And it was years ago...
Well that depends on how thoroughly I overhaul this really - but whatever we decide, I'm happy enough to tackle. I've had first hand experience of developing then debugging a complex permissions system. (I'd note it's not perfect, but mostly because of the complicated way board access was handled. The underlying permissions are still fine.)