Any advice on how best to display success/error messages while editing fields in an inline data grid.
I've got an editable grid where records are saved (and validations are performed) as the cells are exited (or blurred). In the event of an error, an error message should be displayed, and a "saved" message should be shown in the event of a successful save.
I'm looking for something subtle that informs without overwhelming the users with feedback messages. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
There are two different situations you need to handle: Successful save, and validation/error. These are quite different so you should treat each solution independently.
On successful save
Typically, this is going to be your most common scenario, especially once the users are familiar with the data they are entering. This is your 99% scenario, so you want this functionality to be subtle.
I recommend two key points:
Something like the following should achieve these aims.
As you can see, once the user enters the "9" and moves to the next cell (mouse click, tab, enter), it is obvious that the value is "set" and is now part of the stored data.
On validation error (or other error)
Unless the user is having trouble understanding the data they should enter, this is your 1% scenario. That means we can afford to be more intrusive with our messages, after all, we want to make sure the user notices the problem so they can fix it.
I suggest this is handled as follows:
Something like this:
Or with a more interactive tooltip message:
These were just some quick mock-ups I threw together. You will probably want to put a bit more care into them, particularly the error tooltip, but hopefully it's enough to get you moving in the right direction.
