I’m currently in the process of developing a mobile interface for viewing articles in the XPages Help Application. One of the significant differences is the navigation model. The initial page has links to the relevant views of the data – Contents, Index, Search (if the database is full text indexed) and Bookmarks (for authenticated users).
Bookmarks and Search results are simple. It is a single-level hierarchy. My dilemma is the best method for the Index and Contents views, so I’m looking for some feedback. There are two options:
1. Show all Help pages on one page, differentiating entries at a different level in the hierarchy in some manner, possibly indenting the text as in the early releases of XPages Help Application. This will be relatively easy from a technical standpoint. All links will go directly to a document, but there will be a lot of entries on the page and the hierarchical structure may not be as clear.
2. Show one level of the hierarchy per page. This means there will be fewer entries per page and the hierarchy will be clear, but navigation will be more convoluted. There is also a big question about how navigation in the Contents view will work. Here a category needs to navigate to children but the category is also in itself a document. What is the best manner of navigation if it shows one hierarchy per page?
For example, Help Entries is a document in its own right, as well as navigating to Managing Help Entries, Creating Help Entries and the Help Views category/document. In the current interface, clicking the category both expands/collapses the tree navigation but also launches the document in the main panel.
Should mobile parallel this navigation, launching the document but include links to the documents under that category? If so, should the links to child documents be above or below the Help document itself? Or should it navigate down to the next level of the hierarchy which would then include a link to the Help document itself? So in the example above, it would show links to open the Help Entries, Managing Help Entries and Creating Help Entries documents as well as a link to open the Help Views category-level document. Or something else?
I’m undecided. The single level is certainly easier and will be straightforward for the Index. But the multi-level would be clearer, certainly for the Contents. If so, I would favour navigating to the next level of the hierarchy but including a link to the category-level document. But I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone who has deployed the Help Application. Let me know your thoughts.
