Clarify language and menu interface for saved items.

[demiankatz]

This PR is intended to clarify the labeling of interface elements related to saved items.

It removes three confusing language strings (Favorites, My Favorites, Your Favorites) and replaces them with two more semantically meaningful strings (default_list_title and saved_items).

It also removes the duplicate link to "Saved Items" at the top of the "Your Lists" section of the account menu. This was redundant with the identical link under "Your Account" and was more confusing than helpful.

TODO

• Run full test suite.
• Update changelog when merging (note changed language strings).
• Resolve VUFIND-1592 when merging.

[sturkel89]

The new arrangement in the test branch is cleaner and makes more logical sense to me than what we have on dev. It’s cleaner because of the removal of the redundant Your Favorites in the Your Lists section; in dev, that link gives identical results as Favorites at the top under Your Account.

I like that in test, only ONE item is highlighted at a time – either the Saved Items link at the top of the Your Account section, or a specific list in the Your Lists section.

My only suggestion is that it wouldn’t hurt/might help if there were a circled number next to the superset Saved Items link in the Your Account section giving an overall total number of items saved. That would go above and beyond to differentiate what you get on that list from what’s in an un-renamed Saved Items list under Your Lists, if the user has one generic list and other named lists.

Screenshots from test:

Screenshots from dev:

[demiankatz]

Thanks, @sturkel89. I agree that showing a total of saved items in the menu is a good idea, but it will take a bit of effort to implement. Thus, I'll merge this now for the sake of progress, and will work on that additional improvement as a separate PR when time permits.

[demiankatz]

See VUFIND-1674 for the suggested improvement. I've pinned that ticket to 10.1, since I'm not sure if I'll have time to do it before then. This will ensure it doesn't get forgotten!

[ThoWagen]

@demiankatz @sturkel89 Currently, we also have the discussion about the duplicated links to the favorites. One of our clients suggested that the link at the top of the menu should be removed instead of the one under "Your Lists" so that everything list related is concentrated in one place. Is there a reason why you removed the one blow rather than the one on top of the list and if that's not the case do you mind if I create a PR that moves the link from top to "Your Lists"?

[demiankatz]

@ThoWagen, there were a few reasons we went with this approach, which is not to say that your proposal is not a possibility:

1.) The "Your Lists" section currently includes only user-created (or auto-created) lists, so adding an "all favorites" link there would mix a higher-level concept with a more-specific concept.
2.) The top list is meant to cover all of the areas of the user's account, and favorites are one such area of the account.
3.) There are some situations in which the top part of the menu is the only thing that is displayed (e.g. when you're on the search history page and have not logged in). Moving the link down would make the feature slightly less visible as a result.
4.) The long-term plan to further clarify the difference between the links was to add a count of all favorites to the top link, so it has something in common with the other top-level links. I started a proof-of-concept of this in #3836, but I've been awaiting feedback before refining and finalizing the code.

I'd also be interested in hearing opinions from @sturkel89!

[sturkel89]

Thanks for the opportunity to comment!

I generally agree with Demian's points, and in particular agree that it's important to include Saved Items in the top (Your Account) section of the menu because EVERYTHING related to the user's account appears up there. Also, in the cases where the top section is all that is displayed, it's good to have it appear there.

I'm not sure that the ordering of the items under My Account is optimized on Dev. (I might argue that checkouts, requests, and fines should all be grouped, and saved items and search history should be grouped, and then profile, library cards, and log out.) Is this customizable for each installation, or not?

I see that we removed the second Saved Items from the top of the second (Your Lists) section in VuFind 10. I agree with Thomas that it's useful to have the superset of the person's lists clickable from the Your Lists section. It doesn't bother me to have the higher-level concept mixed with the more-specific concept.

Since we haven't upgraded yet at Villanova, it appears in both places and I like the ability to click Saved Items in the lower section, immediately above the two smaller lists, to see everything at once. (This works especially well for us because we have a big section in the middle providing access to Other Accounts.)

I am ignoring the question of terminology (Favorites, My Favorites, and Saved Items) and the icons that have appeared (star vs. list) in my comments here!

See below for a screenshot from Dev today, and from the Villanova installation (VuFind 9.1.1). I like the Villanova design slightly better!

DEV:

Villanova:

[demiankatz]

While I don't object in theory to adding a way to access all favorites from the "Your Lists" section, I don't really like putting it at the top and calling it "Saved Items." Making something that isn't a list look like a list in a list of lists is inherently confusing (as evidenced by this very sentence ;-) ). I wonder if a clearer approach (if we decide we need the redundancy at all) would be to add an action link at the bottom, next to "Create a List" that says something like "See all items saved in lists". But that's more internationalization and yet another change to this UI. I'm open to whatever people think is most clear, but at the same time I'm not eager to keep making changes in every release. :-)

Regarding the question about customizing the order of the account menu, this is now very easy to do thanks to the AccountMenu.yaml configuration file.

[ThoWagen]

Thanks for the explanation. I can see now why my suggestion is a problem. Would it be a good compromise to move the "Saved Items" link to the bottom of the "Your Account" Section? It is then kind of grouped with the "Your Lists" Section but still part of "Your Account".

[demiankatz]

Thanks for the explanation. I can see now why my suggestion is a problem. Would it be a good compromise to move the "Saved Items" link to the bottom of the "Your Account" Section? It is then kind of grouped with the "Your Lists" Section but still part of "Your Account".

It's very easy to customize the order of the menu now that we have AccountMenu.yaml available. I'm not opposed in principle to changing the default order, but I think we would need to come up with some community process for determining it, just to be sure there's widespread agreement and to make all desired changes at once. I just want to avoid the situation where we keep moving things around incrementally based on the most recent feedback received, which could end up being confusing for everyone. :-)

[ThoWagen]

Alright, I understand that. Fortunately, we can customize that easily now with the config :)