Wednesday 20 January 2010 12:20:44 am

Have updated the extension version of the design. Install instructions: http://bit.ly/8auyd3

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Wednesday 20 January 2010 12:25:56 pm

Hi André,

Since I urged you to check out my latest commits, I guess I have to check out yours as well. :)

Contrary to some people, i love the new node details tabs, and hope they are here to stay. To me, they are the single, greatest improvement to the admin interface. Still, I would ask that you remember to keep the the functionality in the current admin which allows you to hide all the details, which makes for smoother browsing of the content structure. This means that there should be some way to expand/collapse the details alltogether.

Regarding the resizable left column, I think you should make it possible to drag/resize all along the right hand side. Also, the icon in the lower, right corner kind of indicates that the box can be resized both in height and width, which is not the case (and wouldn't make much sense, either). I'm thinking something like this, but vertical: http://www.itsavesyou.com/TextArea_Resizer_example.htm

Allthough I assume that there will be some theme changes before the new design is released, I think that the current version might already be better than the old one as far as esthetics go, and I ask you to tread lightly when adding colors. Making the design themable (and easy to create themes for, perhaps as separate design extensions) might be a good idea.

I would say that the drag-and-drop ordering of sub items, as well as entire subtrees in the left column, is a must. To me, it makes sense that their position is saved upon dropping, and not upon clicking a "Set" button. Even with the current interface, our clients are having trouble understanding that they should click the "Set" button after having done sorting changes.

What I think the interface still lacks (this might be improved in the "theming fase", though) is a general focus on the more important elements of any given interface. For instance, when editing an object, the "Send for publishing" button blends in with all the other buttons. In my opionon, it could be bigger, and perhaps even have a separate color (orange?) making it stand out (love the fullscreen editing, BTW).

That's all for now. Continue to dazzle us! ;)

Sincerely,

Eirik Alfstad Johansen
http://www.netmaking.no/

Wednesday 27 January 2010 11:10:13 am

Hi,

I've just tested the current SVN version of the design admin2, it looks nicer and nicer day after day :) I have just some notes on tab ui on content/view :

1. it would be nice to be able to choose which tabs should appear or not. For instance, on most sites we do, the object states are not used so this tab is useless so an easy way to remove/hide (INI settings ?) would be interesting !
2. I find also a bit weird that the Details tab is the second tab. IMHO the best order for me is : Preview, Translations (if there are several languages), Locations, Details, Relations, Object states. But again a bunch of INI settings would be interesting to be able to easily change this order depending on the project
3. On the top of the tabs, there is also a part about the node id and the object id. This part is only useful to developers and should be removed as it is also available in the details tab.

Cheers

Damien
Planet eZ Publish.fr : http://www.planet-ezpublish.fr
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Thursday 28 January 2010 6:25:18 am

At the eZ Winter Conf (and before I think), I've heard that the new admin interface should be centered on the editor's needs. Node ids and content object ids are far from the editors needs, don't you think ? The more the interface is cleaned from technical terms the better it will be !

Damien
Planet eZ Publish.fr : http://www.planet-ezpublish.fr
Certification : http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/372448
Publications about eZ Publish : http://pwet.fr/tags/keywords/weblog/ez_publish

Saturday 30 January 2010 11:23:27 am

This new admin interface is not answer to primary problem. I am not impressed in any way.. Ok, new color scheme looks modern, loads faster but that is all we have here...

Lets look and simple everyday tasks

- entering new article: how many clicks is needed before you can even start entering content (you need to expand structure tree, find your target location, wait for it to loads middle of the page then choose from Create here menu class type, then click Create here

- second task: entering new content and want to preview it. Where to click - main buttons available are Publish, Store Draft, Discard draft. Where is Preview? Nowhere. It is in the left sidebar as "View". View what? Stored draft or this copy I am currenty editing? Confusing, confusing

I was last two days present on presentations of CMS solutions for 4 big projects (here in Croatia). I may say, most of home-build CMS-es from teams of 3 or 4 developers have much, much more user friendly administration interfaces... focused on daily content management tasks...

General opinion of panel of about 10 web users watching live demos is that eZPublish is the worst of them and I must agree.

So guys, you need to redesign admin interface not only by changing colors and little layout changes - you need redesign it from the scratch.

Friday 05 February 2010 7:11:35 am

I'ts not hard to feel the frustration within some of the developers here. Adding sliding functions, tabs, drag-n-drop and different colors on buttons are not the solution to our working day problems. (I know it's not for this phase, I'm just saying it's not hard to understand it.)

I'm worried about my future as a developer clicking around in the this user-friendly "admin" interface. I want none of the sliding effects. I want raw hardcore data in a developer-friendy way. I want statistics and information about the system. Answers to question that I get when I develop templates and php-code. It's not user-friendly and nor should it be.

I'm beginning to sense a strong need for two different view modes, or maybe even two different siteaccesses:

* editor (maxium user-friendly, less is more) and an,
* admin (data, id's, identifiers, numbers, statistics, you name it, the more the merrier)

And what about the front-end editing?

Superfriendly front-end and superfriendly back-end? What is you plan here? Why two places?

I may sound negative about this but I'm not. I like this discussion. Where is the one for admin functionallity?

Saturday 06 February 2010 6:56:03 am

Next iteration:

http://twitpic.com/11oqsf

http://twitpic.com/11oqy7

Changes:

• properly set the name of the 'craete' button, in case somebdody misunderstands it
• use language flag instead of full name in language picker: takes up less horizontal space, makes up for less visual clutter (it is not clicked upon in 90% of edits anyway)
• add an icon to have the nav menu on the left hand slide away 100%. This is independent from it being resizeable via dragging the handle
• add an icon to hide the main-node-view block, just the same as the childrens block can
• on the right-hand menu, add settings related to editing/navigating (more on that below)

As for the things that cannot be explained in a picture (ie. behaviors)

• the currently selected tab in the node block, and the state of hide/unhide for node block and for children block should be remembered while navigating around. I propose 2 modes: 1st: keep the current mode following through user session; 2nd: save this mode per every item (same as in ms windows you can do with every folder). 2nd mode chews up db space and cpu, but here again, it feels natural for people coming from filesystem navigators in the os. PS: the view-mode of children items (icons, list, detailed) should be saved as part of this mode. This is the 1st set of settings on the right hand menu
• the 2nd set of settings on right hand tells the system where user wants to go after publishing a node: currently this option exists but is hiddden in a completely unrelated place (user page). It needs to be expanded too, as one option that I frequently want is not allowed: go back to viewing node just published. the other 2 options are the existing ones: go back to parent node, and create a new sibling object of same class
• In the different tabs of the node block, actions should be doable that currently are only accessible from node edit mode but are independent of actual object publishing: hide/unhide (from 'locations'), set obj state (from 'obj states'), set section (from 'details')

More considerations:

• I tried my best to keep the buttons sets in 1 line, to convey the 'toolbar' feeling. I loathe buttons on 2 lines
• beside 'move', 'delete' we could have space to fit in there 'hide'/'hide selected', too. Especially if we find an abbreviation for the word 'selected' (maybe write it once only: "Selection: [delete][move][hide]")
• I did not yet put in the buttons for picking different sorting order. I think they should fit in the 1-line-toolbar, maybe making them not-very-wide or putting them in single button + a subpanel that appears via js
• advanced search should be more readily available (but have an improved, simplified interface, too)
• last but not least: I do not like too much the right menu starting below breadcrumb and right menu starting below main header. I think dropping down a bit right and menu is better

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

Wednesday 03 March 2010 4:51:09 am

Agreed with Piotrek. Design needs to be less white, because at current state it feels unpolished and not very feature packed.

Few suggestions about the new features.

1) Integrate admin2pp extension in the main distribution files.

2) Add drag&drop support for content object tree, not just the list of children objects.

3) Add fine grained control of template block and template compile caches, not just global Clear option.

4) In class list, at the right end of the table, there's a number of objects available for certain class. Make it clickable to list all content objects of certain class.

5) When adding subtrees and nodes to policies, only name is displayed in the list of already added nodes/subtrees. There's no way to find out the actual node/subtree it is referring to if there are tens of thousands objects or objects with the same name. At least add the link and display the subtree path of the nodes/subtrees involved, similar to when adding a role to user group with a limit to subtree.

eZ Publish certified developer

http://ez.no/certification/verify/350658

Wednesday 03 March 2010 3:56:44 pm

Hi Andre

The current design is quite stark and is major departure from the current look (I've code named it "Polar bear in snowstorm" - PBiS :). Functionally and layout wise I think it's a great step forward, though I am concerned that it's going to cause major issues with a lot of editors.

It would be great to have the option of an old "look" design that can be applied to the new interface to help with this transition.

I think that Thomas' suggestions would help eliminate some of the starkness. You can see his suggested changes here http://issues.ez.no/AttachmentItemContent.php?Id=6953

The major issue I have with the new design is that elements get lost. This is especially apparent on the edit screen where there are numerous information areas in the left hand column. See http://twitpic.com/16ga7r. There is no clear visual separation of the these and this is not helped with the headers being the same size/font/weight as the labels (this is because they both use h4's!) using within the main content. The same applies to attributes - it'a difficult to tell where one starts and another finishes.

The starkness or flatness of the design means that nothing stands out and users have to search for what they are looking for, there is no visual hierarchy that guides users to complete the task.

Taking the edit screen as an example, the center content has to be differiented from the the left hand menu, adding a background to the elements of the main content area helps this. See: http://twitpic.com/16ghn6 for some simple CSS changes that block up the content a bit and make it clearer what the sections are.

I hope that there is still room for cosmetic changes to the interface before 30^th March - 6.

Cheers
Bruce

My Blog: http://www.stuffandcontent.com/
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Thursday 04 March 2010 12:57:37 am

+1(000)

By the way, A frame aroud the login screen would be nice too :)

--
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/346216