Clicking a column header to unsort a list is unintuitive

[Kathy Lussier]

Evergreen release: 2.9+

In Evergreen 2.9, we introduced sorting to the My Account Items Out, Checkout History, and Holds screens. According the the release notes:

"Clicking on the appropriate column heads now sorts the contents from “ascending” to “descending” to “no sort”. (The “no sort” restores the original list as presented in the screen.)"

The sorting works as described above, but restoring these lists to the default sort order after clicking a title, author, etc. heading is unintuitive to the end user. I think most users would expect that clicking a column header would resort the list by that particular field, toggling between ascending and descending.

[Kathy Lussier (klussier)]

Adding a link to a screencast that shows this behavior in action:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74gDMUDwDXqMFM2VU9VTF9XTlE/view

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

Absolutely - clicking a column header should ideally sort ascending, or if already ascending, should re-sort descending.

[Kathy Lussier (klussier)]

This seems to do the trick:

http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/kmlussier/lp1584807-column-header-clicking-doesnt-unsort-list

Test plan:

* Using the concerto dataset, log in as user 99999395984 / maes1234
* Go to the Items Out area of my account and click the title column header to
sort the list.
* The list will first sort alphabetically in ascending order, on a second click
will sort alphabetically in descending order, and, on a third click, will
return to the default sort order.
* After loading the patch, clicking the column header should only result in
sorting in ascending and descending order.

[Galen Charlton (gmc)]

Discussion in support of removing the tri-state: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/86637/should-clicking-a-column-3-times-remove-the-sort

[Galen Charlton (gmc)]

I've pushed a sign-off branch: user/gmcharlt/lp1584807_signed_off

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

I tend to agree with the folks on stackexchange - having the third click be an unsort option could occasionally be useful, but I think it would be more intuitive to have the third click just go back to sort ascending again and not have an unsort option.

Typically, if I want a screen to go back to the default, I'll either refresh the page it's on or go back and re-submit the search.

[Jason Stephenson (jstephenson)]

The branch works for me.

Galen, is there any reason that you signed off and didn't push this to master/2.10 and I guess, now, 2.11?

[Jason Stephenson (jstephenson)]

FWIW: I pushed a signed off branch to working: user/dyrcona/lp1584807_signed_off

http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/dyrcona/lp1584807_signed_off