Create the functionality to add laws to a portfolio

[waldoj]

Let people maintain a sort of a shopping cart of laws (and chapters, titles, etc?).

• create JavaScript functions to add, remove, and display the status of an individual law in local storage
• create a JavaScript function to list every law in local storage
• implement the add/remove/status functionality on the law page
• create a new page to list every law in local storage
• devise a name for this feature
• display the menu item for this new page only if the user has 1+ laws in local storage

[waldoj]

Use local storage for this and skip all the PHP.

[waldoj]

This can be done with jQuery. When triggered by a user action, execute localStorage.setItem(this.law,'saved') or localStorage.removeItem(this.law), or something like that. Each law's page can reflect whether or not the law has been saved by the person, and then the portfolio page can just iterate through all of the laws in the user's portfolio and display the list.

[waldoj]

It really would be helpful if, at the time that this function was triggered, we also made a call to the server to simply report that somebody (anonymously) has added this law to their portfolio. If we can know that an individual is tracking a particular collection of laws, then we can know that those laws are in some way related. That's really useful. It's great to do this client-side, but don't lose the really useful data that comes of having some knowledge about who's tracking what.

[krusynth]

Propose moving Milestone to Future.

[waldoj]

I don't want to let this go. At a minimum, I want to add the functionality without server-side tracking. At that point, it's just a handful of lines of JavaScript and a bit of CSS. It might not even need its own page—it could just be an overlay.

[krusynth]

Keep in mind something like this needs a lot of UX to be done right. It's not just an add-to-cart, it's also remove-from-cart, organize-my-cart, etc - and all of that needs to be designed.

And of course the legalese at the bottom has to get an update because of cookie Local Storage use (privacy policy), and on any european installations we'll need a theme with a popup to tell them cookies local storage is in use. Disregard, localStorage has pretty decent browser support. Disregard my disregarding, the laws that cover cookie usage also cover localStorage. Huh.

[waldoj]

Nah, no need for cookies—it's all in local storage. And I'm not worried about Europe—I don't have the faintest idea of how their legal codes work, but it's way out of the scope of this project now. And I don't see any need for organizing as a 1.0 feature. Really, it's just add and remove, and remove can just be a toggled display on the law page (e.g., "Add" becomes "Remove").

Ain't no harm in trying. I'll enjoy it.

[krusynth]

Ok, but please at least try to get a few minutes of @boboroshi 's time on this. ;) Modals suck.

[krusynth]

The legalese will need to be updated though. If we're putting anything on user's computers, we need some sort of privacy policy by default. Our localities won't be cool with it otherwise. (To be fair, we probably need one for Google Analytics as well though. Oops.)

[waldoj]

The legalese is really just isn't our problem. It's up to everybody installing this to determine what laws matter in their state and locality and provide the appropriate TOS, privacy policy, etc. Just as with WordPress, Drupal, etc.

As people who also implement this software, legalese is our problem, but that's wearing a different hat. :)

[krusynth]

My hat is very complicated and dapper. 🎩

[krusynth]

@waldoj Not to beat a dead horse here, but what's the point of this feature? How is it not just duplicating the native bookmarks in-browser? Or is this for offline reading?

[waldoj]

This has been an often-requested feature. People researching laws often find multiple relevant ones, and they want to mark the ones that seem relevant, as they go. Like a shopping cart, but for laws. This is especially for citizens who are doing their own legal research, not attorneys or lawmakers (that's who keeps requesting this).

[krusynth]

Do they not know how to bookmark things? ¯(°_o)/¯

[waldoj]

Almost nobody bookmarks things, and those who do regard it not as a place for temporary collections (ie, "laws that might potentially be the one I'm looking for over ten minutes of research") but instead permanent ("now that I've signed up for online banking, I should bookmark the site"). Bookmark management is built to encourage this behavior.