[bkonia]

Originally posted by PureMoxie
Hmm, interesting idea, but what size is your screen, 50"? ;-)

I have a 17" notebook with 1680 X 1050 resolution. Therefore, I have more than enough screen real estate to accomodate more panes. While not everyone has that much resolution, most notebooks being sold today have at least 1440 X 900 resolution. Obviously, if your display is 800 X 600, this feature will not be of much use to you, but I think UR should be designed so that users who have the necessary resolution, can take advantage of it.

There are already 7 panes. True, they don't all have to be showing at once, but if they are, there just doesn't seem to be anywhere else to put additional panes.

Since the new panes would be "Data Explorer" panes, they could probably use some of the space that's now being used by the main Data Explorer pane. You could shrink your main Data Explorer since it would no longer be necessary to use it for everything. Another possibility would be your idea for adding tabs to the Data Explorer, which would allow the user to rapidly switch to different views, while leaving the other views intact.

I think the above point gets to the crux of the issue. It's not so much that you need everything displayed on the screen at once. It's more that you need a way to jump around to different sections of the tree without losing your place. You can SORT OF do this with Favorites, but with Favorites, you still have the clutter of the entire tree displayed on your screen. For example, if you want to review your task list, you don't want to be distracted by all the other stuff in the tree...you just want to see your task list. A lot of times, I find myself staring at the tree not even knowing what I'm looking at, because there are so many objects nested through so many levels. If you turn your attention away for a minute, when you come back to your computer, you have to go through a thought process to figure out what you were working on.

I think the idea of a filtered, hoisted, or some other dynamic version of the data explorer pane might make more sense. The idea of showing a subset of the entire tree based on some dynamic criteria might be part of what you're after.

I do like the general idea you're talking about, I'm just not sure exactly how it would play out in the interface... Perhaps when the tabbed item browser comes about there could also be a tabbed data explorer pane?

Yes, your idea for a tabbed Data Explorer makes a lot of sense to me. Since I have the screen resolution, I think I would still want the OPTION to add additional Data Explorer panes, but adding tabs to the main Data Explorer pane would be a HUGE improvement.

But linking freely may be the best approach, anyway - entire views (e.g., all contacts, all tasks) can easily be created as a search item and then placed at multiple locations in the tree. And with favorites' shortcut keys, any of these views are always a keystroke away.

I strongly disagree with the above statement. Linking freely is ONE approach, but it is definitely not the best approach for every situation. Links make sense when an object is logically related to more than one parent object. Rather than forcing the user to choose one place to file an object, links allow him to file it in multiple locations. However, adding links just for the sake of speeding navigation within the tree seems like a poor workaround, when compared with the solutions discussed above.