[Pugged] Moving up and down

[Lathrop Preston]

At 11:43 AM 9/11/2002, you wrote:
>Another question!
>
>Again related to my forums. In my forum administration pages I have one 
>where I can add, edit, delete, and re-order my categories and forums. I 
>would like to ask if anyone has any good suggestions on how to handle the 
>positioning, and the re-ordering.
>
>I was thinking I could include a field in the tables for Category and 
>Forums, "catPosition" and "frmPosition" which would contain a number 1, 2, 
>3... When I then want to move a category up above another I would have to 
>do a update on both records, incrementing one's position and decrementing 
>the other. Basically when on the management page, I would click a link 
>"move up" or "move down" and it would move the category or forum 1 spot at 
>a time.
>
>I could also handle this with a position admin page that lists each topic 
>and then the forums within and gives a text box with the position number 
>in it, then just editing them manually. Then when I display my records I 
>can just sort by this field. Definately the benefit here is you can do a 
>series of changes easily, rather than one at a time... likely the best of 
>the two option.
>
>Both are workable options, just curious which would be the easiest, and 
>would there be any considerations I would have to include?

I have seen both ways. I find the "catOrder" with up and down arrows to 
swap items works fairly well. (the other runs a greater risk of user error)

While it does add a few more clicks if you are making a large change, I 
wonder how often this feature would really be used. So the interface 
overhead is probably not as much of a problem as the user error risk of the 
other option.

just MHO

Laith