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I want to display hierarchical data in the user interface in a treeview control.

The question is should the user has the freedom to define its first root node itself.

I do not care wether a tree has a root node to be a tree.

I just think about the advantage for the user having a pre-defined root node or not in the UI.

Do you see any disadvantage for the usability or that the user could be restricted from

certain posibilities having a pre-defined root node?

In my opinion the root node has this disadvantage:

  • its just a stupid placeholder for nothing, just there so the children are there...
  • it can usually not be deleted, thus I have to do extra checks...
  • I have to think about a creative name for the root node

Do not need:

MySuperRootNode
  11
  12
    21
    22

Totally fine should be:

1
  11
  12
2
  21
  22
Pascal
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  • MySuperRootNode seems rather unimportant in this instance. – LarsTech Aug 01 '12 at 20:21
  • This is what I meant. A pre-defined root node is superfluous. The user should be able to have multiple root nodes... – Pascal Aug 01 '12 at 20:55
  • I'm not sure there is a question here. Is there a problem getting setting up the tree without that super node? – LarsTech Aug 01 '12 at 20:59
  • No problem here. Yes there is a question. From ground up we learn a treeview has a root node etc... But does the user/user interface care ? Is it not better to let the user choose what he wants? – Pascal Aug 01 '12 at 21:02
  • I think this question belongs on [ux.stackexchange.com](http://ux.stackexchange.com). – LarsTech Aug 01 '12 at 21:04
  • Can you move it there? ok I did :P thanks – Pascal Aug 01 '12 at 21:08

0 Answers0