[Dev] Tool categories

[Kartick Suriamoorthy]

I agree with the "Change" and "View/Display" categorization ...

Pretty much every tool I have built for the ZONA vendors fall
into these categories ...

-- Kartick
________________________________
From: dev-bounces at ziptie.org [mailto:dev-bounces at ziptie.org] On Behalf Of Michael Nels
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:27 PM
To: ZipTie Development List
Subject: Re: [Dev] Tool categories

We definitely need to keep RO apart from RW.

I like:

 *   Change
 *   Display

But I also like

 *   Change
 *   View

Nels


On 5/14/08 5:14 PM, "Ryan Kruse" <rkruse at alterpoint.com> wrote:

Yeah, I see that those are confusing.  How about just these two then?

* Change
* Display

I just don't want to confuse some of our change tools (which can be more dangerous), with our more easily run read-only tools.  I thought it might look weird if all of the RO tools were left at the top menu and all of the RW tools were under a sub-menu.

________________________________
From: dev-bounces at ziptie.org [mailto:dev-bounces at ziptie.org] On Behalf Of Brett Wooldridge
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 5:11 PM
To: ZipTie Development List
Subject: Re: [Dev] Tool categories

I'm cool with not using a vendor category, but I don't like the 'Display' vs 'Live' categories.   If I had covered my eyes, or had never seen that email I would have expected 'Ping' to be under 'Display'.  Its too generic a term to be meaningful, IMHO, and I think will confuse new users.

Why do you think it is  important to have every tool under  a submenu?  Maybe a discussion will shake out the right categories.

-Brett

On 5/15/08 6:52 AM, "Ryan Kruse" <rkruse at alterpoint.com> wrote:

I'd like to put every tool in a category for  2008.04b. See below.


 *
 *   Change
 *
    *
    *   OS Push
    *
    *
    *   Password Change
    *
    *
    *   SNMP Community Changes
    *
    *
    *   Syslog Setup
    *
    *
    *   Port Enable/Disable
    *
    *
    *   Port VLAN Assignment
    *
    *
    *   NTP Setup
 *
 *   Display
 *
    *
    *   Filters/ACL Model
    *
    *
    *   Interfaces Model
    *
    *
    *   VLAN Model
 *
 *   Live
 *
    *
    *   Retrieve Images
    *
    *
    *   SNMP walk the system tree
    *
    *
    *   OS Fingerprint
    *
    *
    *   Traceroute
    *
    *
    *   Ping

Additionally I don't want to build categories for device types,  e.g. Cisco.  The tool filter should take out the tool if it isn't  applicable.  The user can rely on it showing up as an indication that it  will work on that device selection.



________________________________
From:  dev-bounces at ziptie.org [mailto:dev-bounces at ziptie.org] On  Behalf Of Brett Wooldridge
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 7:09  AM
To: ZipTie Development List
Subject: [Dev] Tool  categories

Team,

I have added  support for nested tool categories so that tools can be grouped under the  submenu in an arbitrary fashion.  The category that a tool resides in is  controlled by the new property 'tool.category'.  It works like  this:

tool.category=Cisco,IOS

If a tool has this property then  under the UI 'Tools' right-click menu would be a submenu called 'Cisco', and a  submenu under that called 'IOS', and under that the tool itself.  I just  used this example to illustrate that it can be nested.  However, I  recommend that we stick to one subcategory deep at this time.  If you  play around with it you'll see what I mean, it is not very nice to navigate a  deep hierarchy to find a tool.

If there is no 'tool.category' property  the tool appears directly under the 'Tools' menu, as it does now.  My  recommendation is that unless a tool is specific to a category, we leave it at  the 'top' (i.e. Ping, Traceroute, etc.) and only use categories when it  declutters the top-level menu.  But we should resist the urge to create a  'General' category and start throwing tools in it.

What we do in  terms of categories will affect how other tool authors categorize their tools,  so let's keep it simple. I think if a vendor has more than one specific  tool (IOS Password Change, IOS Software Distribution) it might warrant a  category.  In this case I would stick with 'Cisco', rather than  'Cisco'->'IOS' or even 'Cisco IOS'.  Only when the Cisco category gets  too full or confusing should another level be added or the tools  recategorized.

I updated the test.properties file, so the test tool now  lives in a deep category hierarchy (to exercise the framework and to serve as  an example of why deep categories suck).

Ryan, you might want to go  through and categorize the tools you think need their own  submenu.

-Brett





Michael Nels | Sr. Director, Open Products

[cid:715410211 at 15052008-32DF]

301 Congress Ave | Suite 400 | Austin, TX 78701
Office: 512.536.8313 | Fax:  512.651.3160

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