I've been working on many things over the past few months (which haven't been pushed here yet) and one of them is fixing the Table of Contents which was broken by updates I did months ago to fix various other issues. I've managed to restore it to my original vision but I am curious how that vision conveys to the user.



This is from the SP interactions page. My question is, is it obvious to you the hierarchy? The lightest orange circle is the root at General Options, followed by Options: Careers being the first child, then Options: Homeworld University being a child of Options: Careers, falling back to the second orange when those children end after Options: School and so on.

Is this working out? Or should I scrap the idea?

Sounds like a good idea
If there is also maybe a info when you hover over it - to see under which main option it is?
Like whith other interactionlists: you first search for the term and when you find it, you need to scroll back to see under which main and sub option it is, which can mean to scroll a long way back when there are a lot options in it.

But at this point I find your idea very good.

I like the idea in general, but I think we need more than shades of orange to indicate the hierarchy, I mean, I know the hierarchy already and I still had to stare at that shot for a while before I "got it." Is there nothing we can do by way of indents, text or background color, or some other means to show for example that menus 11, 12, 13, and 14 are all children of 10 with equal footing and then that 15 through 18 are on the same level as 10 with 19 being a child of 18? Could we stick a ">" and then a ">>" or some such symbols in front of the children and grandchildren or would that add too much text clutter?

Without explanation, I don't think different colours indicating hierarchy is obvious, I don't know the hierarchy and I didn't get it. I agree with Igazor that some further indication would be helpful.
I would suggest using 9.1, 9.1.1 etc. but that would break the circles, which are nice and match the NRaas logo.
Maybe put the indicater in the description: instead of "Options: Careers" make it "Options > Careers", and for 11 "Options > Careers > Homeworld University"? Though I'm not quite happy with the > for this, maybe someone has a better suggestion.

Also, for me personally the colours look inversed, dark for me indicates higher on the hierarchy, not lower, but that's just my personal "feel".

Lastly, not directly related but while we're on the subject of TOC's, I noticed a while ago that in the list of Mods on the right, Relativity and RelationshipPanel are reversed, assuming they are meant to be in alphabetical order. Not a big deal, but I thought it mention it.

It is not as clear as it should be as the colors just don't make it obvious, and I do understand and have read the SP section many times in the past when I first started using it. I think the child sections should be indented under the parent to make things a bit more clear if that is not too much trouble. Awesome that you are still finding time to fix things.

Cassie post_id=72043 time=1581160768 user_id=18582 wrote: Also, for me personally the colours look inversed, dark for me indicates higher on the hierarchy, not lower, but that's just my personal "feel".

This. Although even then, I wouldn't really interpret that as hierarchy without a legend or explanation explicitly saying so, which kind of beats the purpose of a graphical solution.

bekkasan wrote: ↑

February 8th, 2020, 7:01 am

I think the child sections should be indented under the parent to make things a bit more clear if that is not too much trouble. Awesome that you are still finding time to fix things.

Yes, identations would be much clearer.

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I'll ponder more on how to better convey the hierarchy that will work with the database structure. If I have time I'll experiment before the next round of code is pushed here but the fixed version of this may end up here for now as I think any TOC is better than the broken one at the moment.