[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

I think it has a lot of merit because of its simplicity, but it doesn't deal well with large screens. I am thinking of something similar but with two checkboxes, or better three radio buttons. The area underneath the first lines would be divided into equal-sized left and right containers. The radio buttons would be labeled "Left", "Hide", "Right" (or something like that).

I like it for big screens, but perhaps on smaller devices one column would be better.

Or, how about if the user only had left selected (or hide), you could automagically expand left to the whole width.

Or maybe left, right, full and hide. Then you could have things like tags go all the way across, but show publisher and publication date on the same line.

Originally Posted by chaley

Things marked "left" would be shown in the left hand container in the order encountered on the list, and the same for right.

This might get complicated for users who wanted things on the same line (like publisher and publication date).

How about make them do it in order? If a right follows a left, they are shown on the same line. If two lefts are in a row, then the first one gets the whole line. That makes the results somewhat more deterministic since it is less reliant on the size of the results for a specific book.

Originally Posted by chaley

I also wouldn't put any size restraints on it. Let the cell take up as much space as it needs, even if it exceeds the height of the cover.

I guess I thought that if the user said they wanted small covers, they are saying that they want more books per page. You are probably right that if they say they want lots of information, they are overriding that decision.

Originally Posted by chaley

There are some potentially "interesting" performance issues that would need thought. In particular, I don't want to be doing a lot of dynamic processing while flinging. I might render the extra info when the cover is drawn, avoiding filling in the extra info while the list is moving rapidly.

I bet it will look cool when the extra information blinks in, but how will you know how big to make the area for the book if you don't do the processing of the extra information?

Can't wait to see this in 3.6.0