Problem:
With the astounding number of operations now available, the original navigation system in the LH panel is showing its limitations, particularly for elementary users such as CyberFirst Girls' Competition entrants.
- Operations in large groups such as Data Format and Encryption / Encoding are listed in no immediately obvious order
- Linear search through such groups is inefficient, and the shear number of unfamiliar operations is likely to be daunting to elementary users.
- An elementary student who can't quite remember the name of the operation she has been introduced to may have trouble finding it.
Possible solutions:
There is no one obvious solution. I shall simply offer a few ideas in the hope that other will help to refine them or offer their own in comments.
- A second level of subdivision on big groups, e.g. for encryption/encoding, divided into Elementary ciphers (ROT, Vigenere etc), Modern (DES and anything post-dating DES), Historical (Enigma, Lorenz and any modern ciphers no longer used), Encoding. However, not everyone might agree on the groupings, though no reason why an operation shouldn't appear in more than one. Similar 2nd level for Data Format.
- Maybe allow Favourites in each group rather than one global Favourites group.
- A simple way for a tutor to choose a set of favourites (ideally group favourites as described above) and to share it with a set of students, who may be running on locked down PCs or Chromebooks, at the same time hiding all non-favourited operations. The set could be specified in the uri, or in a startup (rc) file.
- Operations listed alphabetically by keyword (so that, for example, To and From Hexdump appear together, sorted by keyword Hexdump).
Ideal solution
Arrived at by discussion and consensus, should be easy to navigate and intuitive, making it easy to find common and more elementary operations.
Problem:
With the astounding number of operations now available, the original navigation system in the LH panel is showing its limitations, particularly for elementary users such as CyberFirst Girls' Competition entrants.
Possible solutions:
There is no one obvious solution. I shall simply offer a few ideas in the hope that other will help to refine them or offer their own in comments.
Ideal solution
Arrived at by discussion and consensus, should be easy to navigate and intuitive, making it easy to find common and more elementary operations.