Symphony.

I might be fudging the naming convention so I'll try to describe.

I created a Sections section and a Pages section (similar to bauhouse's). I noticed that you need to access .../pages/ with a filter (ie. .../pages/?filter=section:46) to see the create new button.

Is there a chance, though, that, when accessing .../pages/new/, we can be presented with a select box for the Sections?

This way I can just access .../pages/, be presented with a create a new page, and inside the new page select the section I'd like to create a new page for.

There's been quite a bit of discussion about utilizing a select box for creating section link associations. The major drawback is what happens when you have hundreds of entries? I'm not sure what the latest idea.

Autocomplete text field? Not lean enough?

Autocomplete is a good idea.

I would use a select box and on domready replace select box with an autocomplete input field via JavaScript. This way they still have access to the select box if JavaScript is off.

I also think that the chances of a large number of entries is minimal. But, the autocomplete is def. a good idea incase someone doesn't refactor their Sections.

I also think that the chances of a large number of entries is minimal

huh?

Autocomplete text field? Not lean enough?

I don't know if this idea has been thought of yet. I wonder what Scott is leaning towards at the moment. I think I like it.

huh?

I was generalizing that section links would promote good abstractions/refactoring.

ie: Menus -> Sections -> Pages

But of course there's the chance of: Years -> Months -> Days -> Hours -> Minutes

and Years can be many years.

One could reduce the number of entries in Years by refactoring into:

Centuries -> Years -> Months -> Days.. and so on

But even centuries is still a large number for the select boxes so that's why I ultimately said that autocomplete field is a great idea.

I'm glad to see that people like the autocomplete idea because I've been hoping to see it emerge as a custom field type.

Lewis said:

I wonder what Scott is leaning towards at the moment.

I don't know yet. The Symphony admin suffers from many UI-scalability problems. We're planning to tackle these from a more holistic level, rather than treat each problem individually, so the solution will take us a little longer to make available.

The goal is to be able to deprecate the Section Link field in favour of a select box + dynamic options + some solution for scalability alternative. Coupling linking with multi-select boxes would also enable many-to-many relationships, so there are benefits to this besides usability.

We realised that basing dynamic options on actual fields isn't terribly useful; it would be better if you could choose a section as dynamic options source, and have your select box filled with the names of entries in that section. czheng suggested a good idea for entry naming, which would also apply to option text. Add the ability to show columns like section links do, and you've pretty much got a suitable section link replacement.

The only problem left is how to deal with large numbers of options. I like the idea of auto-completion, but I think there should also be some way to browse options, and have HTML links appear for each entry selected. There's already been some discussion on possible UIs for this, but as yet nothing is decided.

This all sounds very promising, Scott. Thanks for the update.