Group module / Permission behaviour

buut Joined: 2003-06-18 Posts: 196	Posted: Sun, 2003-07-13 21:25
	While playing/testing around these are a few of my notes on the Group Module / Permission function: Sub album checkbox Although the sub album checkbox is a important checkbox, it is easily to forget. (well.. it happened to me a few times) This can significant be improved to locate the checkbox on the same line as the permission listbox. Something looking like this: groupname [.....] [permissionlist \|v] [ _ ] subalbum checkbox [addpermission button] This also applies to remove permissions function. delete group Deleting a permissiongroup is failing into: Delete a group Do you really want to delete group '%s'? [Delete] [Cancel] In the conformation line the %s should be the permissiongroup name. Hitting the delete button gives a list of script errors: Error (ERROR_BAD_PARAMETER) in file D:\ftpgallery\wwwroot\gallery21\modules\core\classes\Gallery.class at line 240 (gallerystatus::error) in file D:\ftpgallery\wwwroot\gallery21\modules\core\AdminDeleteGroup.inc at line 66 (gallery::loadentitiesbyid) in file D:\ftpgallery\wwwroot\gallery21\main.php at line 131 (admindeletegroupcontroller::handlerequest) in file D:\ftpgallery\wwwroot\gallery21\main.php at line 24 Permission propogation/reset missing: In the group management it can be very handy to have a permission propogation function. Which replace all the permissions on all items with the permission selected. Similar to the sub album checkbox but for all permissions. Keep it in mind for 'group module v1.1' Listboxes The use of listboxes increases the 'ease of use'. In de group module you need exactly to now the user/group name. This would be a major improvement.[/] [/] [/]
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bharat Joined: 2002-05-21 Posts: 7994	Posted: Tue, 2003-07-15 05:51
	buut wrote: While playing/testing around these are a few of my notes on the Group Module / Permission function: Sub album checkbox Although the sub album checkbox is a important checkbox, it is easily to forget. (well.. it happened to me a few times) This can significant be improved to locate the checkbox on the same line as the permission listbox. Something looking like this: groupname [.....] [permissionlist \|v] [ _ ] subalbum checkbox [addpermission button] This also applies to remove permissions function. I agree. I'm going to defer this until we re-do the UI (very soon now) and I can get some feedback from Ross on what he thinks we should do about this UI. Right now I think the permission UI may still be to complex altogether. buut wrote: delete group Deleting a permissiongroup is failing into: Delete a group Do you really want to delete group '%s'? [Delete] [Cancel] In the conformation line the %s should be the permissiongroup name. Good catch! I've fixed this (will check it in as soon as CVS starts behaving itself). buut wrote: Permission propogation/reset missing: In the group management it can be very handy to have a permission propogation function. Which replace all the permissions on all items with the permission selected. Similar to the sub album checkbox but for all permissions. I'm not sure I fully understand what you want here. Group management is really just associating users together for convenience. Are you saying that you'd like to be able to easily blow away all the permissions that a group has for a given item and replace them with a new permission? Can you give me an example of where that would be useful? buut wrote: Listboxes The use of listboxes increases the 'ease of use'. In de group module you need exactly to now the user/group name. This would be a major improvement. Yep. We'll probably have a "locate user" and "locate group" button that lets you use some kind of search feature to find users and groups. That won't happen until after the UI makeover, though.[/] [/]

buut Joined: 2003-06-18 Posts: 196	Posted: Tue, 2003-07-15 19:34
	Quote: Are you saying that you'd like to be able to easily blow away all the permissions that a group has for a given item and replace them with a new permission? Yip, replaces all the permission on a tree of sub items with other permissions Quote: Can you give me an example of where that would be useful? What happend... In all my enthousiasm is was trying to create the following situation Any gallery visitor: can only view the thumbnail Registered user: can only view resized version Commenters: can add/view/edit/delete comments This off course with group permissions instead off individual user permissions. My goal: Test the group/permissions module, and familiar myself with the group/permission module. In the process I created the groups/users, and applying them on a album and subitems. On short notice I had created a situation where all sub items had not all the correct group permissions, and a few permissions to many. Due to the fact that the checkbox 'sub album' is/was easily to forget, i had removed the permission from the album (without the subalbum checkbox). I got myself into the situation that I wanted to delete the permissions on the subitems, while the permissions already was removed from the album. This is the moment that a permission reset or permission propogation would help me out. The only way to reset the permissions on the subitems, was the add the same permission on the album, and remove the permissions with the 'subalbum' checkbox checked. (instead of removing all permissions individualy from each subitem, I test with only 40 subitems. Which is to much work for me to handle it one by one - Oh, lazy me) Am I the only one facing this situation? To mine opinion this is a very realistic situation. Easily to produce/run into when you are running a large gallery with lots of different permission. It can become so confusing that resetting all the permissions, and applying the correct permissions, will be the fastest and best way to solve fuzzy permission issues. Even a reset to 'all users' -> 'have no item access' is good! This will force the album manager to overthink his permission thoroughly. In this case my mind is also fed with my experience as a support engineer/network administrator on Major/medium company networks. Where i learn my permission lessons... Although I'am aware of the fact that when I used the checkbox 'subalbum' correctly, the situation propably never had happend. I still think that a permission propogation is a 'nice to have' option. (rather than a 'must have' - Thats why I made a suggestion to group module v1.1) Well these are my though so far... If these though are 'way beyond' just say so.

buut Joined: 2003-06-18 Posts: 196	Posted: Wed, 2003-07-16 20:08
	Digging through forum history showed/insured me that I'am not 'the only one'... In post: http://gallery.menalto.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=2839 is inheritance of permissions proposed. Permission inheritance can be very useful, but also a pain. The design of giving each item his own set of permissions (is a good design), and makes inheritance difficult to implement. (like explained) Permission propogation will give G2 almost the same functionality as the proposed inheritance. The only difference is that permission inheritance is 'automatic' and permission propogation is a 'on demand' function.

bharat Joined: 2002-05-21 Posts: 7994	Posted: Fri, 2003-07-18 03:26
	You're right that we need to come up with a better way to manage permissions. I think that this is mostly a problem of designing a good UI so that all the necessary options are available to you, and that is no small problem. When Ross finishes up with this round of UI changes I'll sic him on this problem and see what he comes up with.

Group module / Permission behaviour

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