How to sort on a single column; OR multiple columns at once (phase 2) [closed]

Question

EDIT: I'm working on this page now and for the next couple of hours, so please don't bother looking at it.

I had many outstanding suggesting when I first asked this question five weeks ago.

The question evolved into "how to show the user the way table columns will be sorted?"

I modified the page so that it now claims to show, as a confirmation, a list of the columns to be sorted; and the sort orders of those columns. Could I ask you to take a look again at the page, with its huge table and tell me how you react to the solution?

EDIT: to make the question explicit.

My question: Can you tell, after selecting a column by clicking its header cell, what the page is going to do? How it will evolve? IOW, when you select a column for sorting, do you see a confirmation of your select action?

If you see the confirmation, is it completely obvious, clear, and unambiguous?

If you don't see the confirmation, please tell me so.

The page works OK in FF 3.16, Safari 5.0.3, and Chrome 12; but to be happy again, IE 8 demands that more virgins be sacrificed.

Answer 1

It's not clear what you're asking, except "Take a look at my design, tell me what you think". As such, there's not much I can do except describe my immediate reactions to the interface, good and bad.

The good:

Your interface doesn't use much vertical screen estate. That's good for users who want to compare a lot of data simultaneously. Your tooltips are explicit, even when controls are unclear (though perhaps your intended users, stockbrokers, would be familiar with your abbreviations)

The bad:

I have no idea how to operate that interface. I try to sort columns by clicking their headers, but nothing happens. There's no obvious 'sort' function. Also, I couldn't tell how to force ascending / descending sorts until I accidentally rested my cursor on a cryptic looking triangular... thing, at which point a helpful tooltip came up.

I had no idea what 'MAN' did until I hovered over it. It's wasn't clear that I was selecting columns for sorting when I highlight them until I accidentally switched 'MAN' to 'AUT' (auto-refresh?). It's confusing that I have to refresh the data to sort the results.

The ugly:

It's hard to read the table itself - you should alternate the background colours of different columns and rows to make tracing lines easier.

Summary:

Needs serious work communicating the sort function. Make your table more readable and look at making 'auto refresh' the default behaviour, so it becomes clear what I'm doing as I highlight the rows.