I want to create a wizard for creating new data.
In one of the steps the user is supposed to select an existing record or create a new one.
There are of course different ways to solve this.
I am leaning toward this solution.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
On the left side you can see the records in the form of cards with additional text. (Typically the user won#t have too many records to choose from hence I use cards instead of a datagrid/list) On the right side is a simple form. Because it is so simple I don't want the user to switch the context so it should be possible to fill out the couple of form inputs inline.
The layout should work in different screen resolutions. I guess the right part will have a fixed width and I can use a fluid design for the left part. For a wide screen monitor/high resolution devices this seems to be fine. However for smaller resolutions this layout might be a problem.
An alternative solution/layout would be to have a tab panel and only display either the "Select existing record" form or the "Create new record" form. However on a wide screen monitor I would have a lot of whitespace.