Re: Forms for entering data into postgresql

On 12/10/2013 23:15, Chuck Davis wrote:
> For those of us who grew up on real computers the only appropriate way 
> to get from one input field to the next is hitting the enter key.  You 
> know what that does in a browser...makes efficient data input 
> impossible.  NOBODY should have to hit the tab key to move the cursor 
> to the next field.

This doesn't seem to me like a fundamental limitation, but simply a 
matter of having to re-train muscle memory. Not that's a trivial thing, 
but it's a cost to "anything other than what you're used to" rather than 
a cost of web UI per se.

It's also perfectly possible for a web app to capture the enter key and 
make it go to next field, and quite common for GUI dialogs to treat 
enter as "accept form", and use tab for "next field".

> Stuff gets to the database by being input by somebody. For Accounts 
> Payable (AP) that is usually a clerk who enters orders/invoices all 
> day.  There are many input fields involved for item, rate, units, 
> etc., etc. including sometimes lengthy descriptions.  That's how stuff 
> gets into the database and doing that in a browser is extremely 
> tedious and VERY inefficient.

This claim has been repeated many times in this thread with very little 
detail on what it is that is fundamentally more efficient in a non-web 
UI. Adrian Klaver gave one alternative, which is to ditch not just the 
web app concept, but much of the GUI. But if your input looks basically 
like a set of form controls, a well-thought-out web app can look and 
feel much the same as a well-thought-out Windows app.

I do still think native GUI apps, and maybe even some script-oriented 
ones, have their place, but with the right toolkit, it's not necessarily 
cut and dried where one ends and the next begins.

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]