The layer list widget in WAB is problematic. End users often struggle to figure out how to use it. My organization has a public facing map viewer with numerous layers grouped into several themes and we configure the layer list to be collapsed by default. The most common problem is that end users dont understand that they can expand the top level group and see the sub-layers to turn on. A secondary probelm is that they turn on a sub-layer while leavng the parent layer un-checked and conclude that the app is not working correctly.
Proposed fixes:
- Make layer list more intuitive by improving the styling. For instance, the arrow that expands the group should be much larger. Also, groups should be styled differently from layers, perhaps with a folder icon. Also, its confusing that the arrow expands groups but also displays symbology for layers.
- More configuration options. As it stands, one can either expand all or collapse all. It would be helpful if one could have more fine grained control over this. For instance, if the layer list widget opened with most groups collapsed, but one expanded, this would help users understand how to use the widget.
- Context sensitive help. There should be an option for admins to input description of how to use the widget. This could be a text (html) area toward the top, or perhaps an 'info' icon that displays the content when the user hovers or clicks (note that this would be a useful enhancement to all widgets accross the board).
- One click to show layers. If a user toggles a sub-layer visible, all parent layers should automatically be checked visible.
- Help users understand scale dependant visibility. The grey text is ok, but not enough. Again, there should be a hover or an icon to get more info, in this case a message explaining that the layer is not visible at the current scale. Context menu should have option 'zoom to visisble scale' for scale dependant layers.
- Show layer description on hover (or click on info icon), rather than making users take the effort to use the context menu and open a new tab, which is not a great user experience. Also, this feature does not work if the service directory has been disabled.
