04 January 2012, 4:49

Hi all,

While developing a new plugin (which should be available shortly, hopefully), I noticed a bug which shows a block header even if there is no content within the block (or no relevant information within the block).

The first image is what will be viewed with the correct shares

The second image is what you see if you don't have the right access to one of the groups

The third (and final) image shows what happens with the Google Apps block if you add nonsense into the description (I added 'x')

The bug has been raised here and I am after some feedback as to what people would prefer to happen with these blocks.

Would you prefer

1. The block header to be displayed with a message to say something along the lines of  "No content exists within this block, or you do not have permission to view the content".
   
2. No block shows up at all.

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

04 January 2012, 6:11

Hi Wullie,

Personally, I think I'd prefer to see a notice to the effect that there's no content at present.

I think that if a Page is used as a form of assessment, then it may reflect poorly on a user if that block is empty for some reason (e.g. an external provider is experiencing a service outage). It may also confuse some users if things are disppearing and they can't work out why.

It would also be nice to keep the message contextually relevant to the block in question. So for example, the "Recent Forum Posts" should give a message such as "There are no recent forum posts for you to view" whilst the "Google Docs" blocktype might give a message such as "The requested document was not found. This could be a temporary error, or you may not have permission to view this document" for example.

Andrew

04 January 2012, 7:47

Andrew,

Thanks for the feedback.

I think that there is no real bug in the core code after all because it looks like it would be difficult for the core to decide if there is no relevant content in differently written blocks/artefacts.

However, it looks like developers will need to be aware to check for this when writing any new plugins.

04 January 2012, 12:27

Hello Wullie,

I agree with Andrew that there should be a message saying that you can't see the content because it could be that one block (a note) is referring to something that you would normally see in the other block whose content you can't see.

Cheers

Kristina