Wednesday 06 July 2011 2:11:47 am
Hi, i'm puzzled by what I think is a forgotten feature and would like to know more about it and get some feedback on why and on what's planned. First, what I found out I discovered the datatype ezobjectrelationlist can allow to create new objects while editing the main one, but not in browse mode. Current implementation only lets you enter a name and creates an empty object when you save the main one. You have then to manually browse to your new object and the edit it. A different behavior was formerly used for browse mode. it has been deprecated around version 3.5 but can be turned on with a backward compatibility setting (AdvancedObjectRelationList). You could then allow inline edition and creation, that is having an object editing form within your main editing form. And now for my thoughts : object relations are no lesser part of eZPublish strongest point : its data model. They allow content reuse and better indexing. We, at Heliopsis, particularly use ezobjectrelationlist datatypes to link images to content, in browse mode. The weak part is that a webmaster has to create his images in the media section before editing content which is quite poor user experience. Unfortunately, both the existing approaches to related object creation have their drawbacks and result in poor UX too :
- Creating an empty object you have to edit later does not dramatically change the process and, I guess, tend to result in many useless objects when used by unrigourous webmasters
- Inline editing BC mode is not very user friendly, buggy when using JS features like ezie and according to site.ini's comments creates nodeless objects
A better UX would IMHO use the following process (say an article related to images) :
- Edit article
- Edit some attributes
- Click on "Create new image" button
- Get to a full image editing form
- Save new image
- Get redirected to article form, new image being related
- Edit some more attributes
- Save article
Questions I'm sure there was a reason deprecating object creation in browse mode, can anybody explain it ? Are there plans to change that datatype's behavior at eZ's or wherever else ? What would be the pitfalls of my proposed process ? Am I missing something ? Thanks for your help.
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