How do I mimic Finder/Explorer views with contextual menus, etc?

Rails
#1

Hi All,

I’m looking for some quality techniques for mimicking a Finder (or
“Explorer View”). Eventually I want to have treeviews, contextual
menus, etc. I’m guessing there is going to be a good deal of
Javascript, which is fine, I’m just curious as to whether there are
quality existing helpers, etc for any of these things.

The current relationship model is as follows:

Sites -> Buildings -> Meters -> Values

There is a polymorphic relationship with Charts, so there’s also:

Sites -> Charts
Buildings -> Charts
Meters -> Charts

I already have the add/remove logic for most of the items, I simply
want to improve the GUI.

Thanks.

#2

I’d say that jquery plugins are the way to go. There are certainly lots
of treeview plugins, and though i’ve not used any there seem to be lots
of right-click plugins as well, eg

http://www.trendskitchens.co.nz/jquery/contextmenu/

If you’re moving into jquery (which i highly recommend) then you should
also start using jrails, a plugin which replaces the scriptaculous calls
made by the rails js helpers with calls to their jquery equivalents.
This isn’t totally necessary but i find it’s better to just use one set
of js libraries rather than mix and match.

http://ennerchi.com/projects/jrails