Admin Facelift. Take 3

Ace of Dubs · 2006-06-05 14:11:37

Thanks for the honest feedback yall…

I think the key to getting this design to work across the board is to keep things fairly light. The more I look at this forum and the TXP home page, the less color I want to put into this. Here is yet another take.

Feel free to rip it apart! :)

Last edited by Ace of Dubs (2006-06-05 14:14:37)

Walker · 2006-06-05 14:31:32

Holy crap! I love it!

One note, though, those DDLs that act as categories won’t be able to work like that. And your dropdown menu would need to use javascript probably, if we wanted to support IE.

Otherwise, I love it. Compact, efficient.

My only problem is with those items called “forms” I mean, I understand how to use them, but couldn’t we come up with a better term for the tab?

hcgtv · 2006-06-05 15:18:05

I like the new design, can we have an admin panel config screen where users can pick their colors?

About adding javascript to the admin area, have you seen the Yahoo! UI Library ?

marios · 2006-06-05 15:39:50

Nice work, probably the nicest , since it does not divert from the original TXP brand identity.
combinng the tabs with the suckerfish dropdowns that way looks pretty nifty.

regards

Last edited by marios (2006-06-05 15:44:12)

Ace of Dubs · 2006-06-05 16:37:04

@ Walker,
Glad you dig it. You are right about those DDL’s..Been looking for a way to style them, but it gets messy with IE, and since we are already pushing the envelope with javascript, it’s probably best to leave them to default styling. Also, I agree that the label “Forms” is misleading and somewhat confusing. “Snippets” or “Components” would probably be more accurate.

@ hcgtv,
I think the best bet would be to add a dropdown menu with various themes to the advanced prefs in the admin tab. Out of curiosity, what’s your favorite color?

@marios,
I think the dropdowns are crucial as the current system forces me to wade through too many clicks to get where I want. (I have the QuikPik plugin installed, but it’s not as intuitive.)

Ages ago, I was looking for a dropdown solution and Suckerfish was a pretty good option, although it didnt work on IE Mac or Netscape. Since then, I found a much more accessible script:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/chrome/index.htm

All that’s left for me to do now is program the CSS for the new look.

hcgtv · 2006-06-05 17:51:15

Ace of Dubs wrote:

@ hcgtv,
I think the best bet would be to add a dropdown menu with various themes to the advanced prefs in the admin tab. Out of curiosity, what’s your favorite color?

That would be fine, since I adminster a few Texpattern sites, I’d like to give each a different color or else I forget where I’m at.

Blue is my favorite color, I have red-green problems.

Ace of Dubs · 2006-06-05 19:10:59

I was thinking along the same lines. It would also be cool to have themes that actually match the branding identity of your clients so they feel at home in their CMS…but thats a whole other undertaking.

@ Everyone

CSS question: For this particular style of navigation, I would have to use classes to distinguish styling for the first and last tab. Will this pose a problem when applying the skin? I like the streamlined look of things right now, but am I better off making all the buttons identical?

Thanks in advance

Edit: Taking a look at the structural code for admin here and … wow. What is up with all these inline styles and nested tables? While I love this program and think it is put together brilliantly, the layout markup needs a serious overhaul! Any plans to address this in future releases?

Last edited by Ace of Dubs (2006-06-05 19:52:32)

Sencer · 2006-06-05 20:02:29

the layout markup needs a serious overhaul! Any plans to address this in future releases?

The admin-side hasn’t been “touched” in a long time, so yes, it has needs an overhaul – in fact that’s how the other two (?) threads got started. And, yes there’s plenty of ideas for the admin-side, which include code-clean-up (no, we never were proud of inline style or tables for layout ;)), a fresher design, customizability and usability improvements.
Mary has hinted a little bit in this topic.

We are limited with what we can do in the 4.0.x line, due to backwards-compatibility, but for crockery (which will be the next major release), we definitely want to move “forward” in this respect.

Nonsense · 2006-06-05 22:01:18

A bit much “gold” for my taste.
But rather tasty none the less.
I’d like it a bit more clean and simple (less gradients for starters).
For instance check out Symphony 21 which is very well designed.
http://demo.symphony21.com/symphony/?page=/login/

or why not

Gmail
http://www.gmail.com

Thanks for a good initiative.

phiw13 · 2006-06-06 03:12:10

Some interesting ideas in there, in terms of organisation.

The colours are quite a bit on the heavy side for my taste (both the use of lots of strong orange/yellow, and the use of multiple gradients). And, as has been mentioned, the colour choice causes problems for people who are colour blind.
The sample that use greys also lacks contrast for people with no-so-young eyes.

Another problem I see is the use of those js-powered drop down menus. You’d have to make sure everything is accessible for keyboard users (suckerfish is not really good).

———————————

Another question that has never really been adressed in the various threads on the subject. How far backwards compatible do we want the TXP admin interface to be ?

The use of Javascript and associated goodies does allow for more powerful interfaces, but supporting older browsers is a serious issue here. Older browsers also have more problems/bugs with CSS support.

Netscape 4.x: completely discontinued, not worthwhile supporting anymore imho.
Netscape 7.x and Mozilla based browsers pre Gecko 1.4: ?? (Firefox 1.0 is Gecko 1.7) I’m not sure how wide spread that one is.
IE 5.x Mac (support discontinued by MS, but still in use, better CSS support than IE 6/7 though js is a bit of a problem)
IE 5.x Win (will not be supported by MS anymore from July 2006 on, still in use)
Konqueror 2.x (not much in use anymore)
Opera 6 and 7 (no much used either, and with Opera 8.5 being free, I think most people have upgraded here)
Safari 1.0 and 1.1 (OS X 10.2).

jm · 2006-06-06 04:08:00

I’d say support:

Opera 8.5+ (though most Opera users upgrade immediately—I can’t wait til 9 is a production release)
Firefox 1.5+
Safari – 10.4
IE5.5+ (probably the greatest number of users for client sites)

-P- · 2006-06-06 07:57:40

I like where this is going. And since I have a thingy with small icons, even more happy to see that here a two (the lock and arrow) included. But the question goes: what about the rest of the admin?

With Mac´s Aqua style scrollbars and buttons the view is of course more tolerable but with other browsers you don´t get even those. And other browsers are a majority.

There are allready some alternatives to style admin. All those affect mainly to the admin header style. What I´d really like to see is some styling also with the rest of the site, particularly in the write article screen.
Now it just looks with all those fields (comments invite/comments on off/time of posting) and text links (advanced options) etc. like someone just tossed them out. I wouldn´t mind seeing some more considered styling there.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#13 2006-06-05 14:11:37

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#14 2006-06-05 14:31:32

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#15 2006-06-05 15:18:05

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#16 2006-06-05 15:39:50

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#17 2006-06-05 16:37:04

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#18 2006-06-05 17:51:15

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#19 2006-06-05 19:10:59

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#20 2006-06-05 20:02:29

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#21 2006-06-05 22:01:18

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#22 2006-06-06 03:12:10

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#23 2006-06-06 04:08:00

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#24 2006-06-06 07:57:40

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

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