Admin Facelift. Take 3

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-06 16:47:35

Some interesting ideas here. While I will be the first to agree that we want to make things as accessible as possible, I don’t see the harm in a little javascript or any other behavior enhancement as long as it degrades gracefully. I haven’t heard about mooFX, thanks for sharing that as it looks like a solution for other projects I have in the works.

As far as progress is concerned, I am still putting together small chunks of CSS when time permits, but I think we need to organize this effort as I am not sure if a more semantic admin was already in store for TXP 4.1. Am I the only brave soul willing to dig under the hood and untangle the mess of wires?

jamiew · 2006-07-07 03:19:09

I’ve been doing some admin area hacking in the course of writing my dub_write quasi-custom-article-types plugin and have been religiously adding id’d div’s… would love to share my code once work subsides.

While definately crockery material I don’t think a semantic admin interface would break any plugin worth their salt. And it would make it so much easier to remove junk elements and add things w/ the DOM! And, god forbid, no more tables. I’d be happy to lend a helping hand.

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-12 20:11:25

Totally agree, jamiew

I will be swamped for the next month or so, but I am actually excited to get this going. It’s also cool that I will be able to take on the admin interface from a better perspective. I must say that after a solid month of hardcore TXPing, it’s not just the look I want to change, but also extending the functionality of how the admin interface is presented, and the logical grouping of tools that work best together.

Perhaps the admin should be presented differently depending on who is logged in…

For example, I think it would be neat to have an admin for the clueless. This way my tech-challenged clients will have an easier time adding content. Here is a rough sketch (pardon the drab gray…just threw this together)

You may ask why I would even include Step 1…

That’s just wishful thinking on my part. A lot of people here agree, it would be pretty rad to assign custom-fields to categories/sections. This way the user is only presented with the relevant info instead of the usual clutter. In the above sketch, the client chooses the category/section and automatically gets the associated fields.

Also notice how there is no Override Form either. Indeed…I believe this is an advanced feature for webmasters, and I am not sure how, but it would make TXP life a lot easier if you could assign form overrides to categories on a conditional basis of who is logged in and what priviledges they have. A more advanced user could switch forms, but a client would automagically get his form override just because of who he is… in this case, a drooling moron. :)

Mary · 2006-07-12 23:26:36

…I am not sure if a more semantic admin was already in store for TXP 4.1.

It is.

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-14 19:00:26

@ Mary
So glad to hear you guys are on top of this..
It will give us users more time to bother you for new features :)

@ All
Been doing a lot of textpatterning the last few days and it has really changed my ideas. Instead of trying to be so pretty, I feel TXP needs to be more functional and in-your face so you have instant access to all your tools. I thought dropdowns were the only solution, but I was wrong…

Only 2 images are used in this layout, so it would be a snap to bang out your own themes. Check out the two themes which I comped up in 5 minutes:

It may not be as streamlined or sleek looking as the others, but you can get anywhere you want in just one click

rloaderro · 2006-07-14 20:09:01

Ace of Dubs wrote:

Been doing a lot of textpatterning the last few days and it has really changed my ideas. Instead of trying to be so pretty, I feel TXP needs to be more functional and in-your face so you have instant access to all your tools. I thought dropdowns were the only solution, but I was wrong…

Hey! I want to say I really dig what you are doing and where you are taking TXP with this! It’s hard to think about what will work and not and what deserves priority since TXP serves so many different uses for so many. As for how you have layed out the write tab though: I think it is a great improvement over the current version! I would happily lend a hand polishing this and translating it into CSS…

swf · 2006-07-14 20:55:35

I like the newest comps, though I must say they remind me of movable type.

hakjoon · 2006-07-14 22:34:57

I like it too. And it does remind me of movable type but that’s not a bad thing.

My only concern is that there isn’t much room for new widgets that might be inserted through plugins.

Also it could potentially be nice to be able to collapse the sections of the side menus. I could see a plugin heavy site really pushing the page down if everything was expanded by default. That being said the same problem exists now with the tabs, and longer pages tend to be easier to deal with then wider pages.

Great job.

NeilA · 2006-07-15 01:40:44

Great stuff Ace!
I love how most things are there at your finger tips…

Can’t wait to see the new release(s) that can make use of this…

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-15 02:12:42

Glad you dig :)

And good point raised by hak here. I think we should file plugins and extensions under “extras”.
This way there is no danger of clutter..

@rloaderro,

Thanks for the offer.. I could really use a hand at making this layout happen. I am at a bit of a loss here since the admin is generated by PHP.. I am not sure how to style all the elements yet, but that will change once I have more free time.

As always, input and critiques are most welcome

cheers

PS- Never seen MT’s admin. Funny how hardcore users often crave the same solutions.

Edit: Woops, forgot to post the articles page:

Last edited by Ace of Dubs (2006-07-15 02:40:19)

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-15 16:45:24

We have talked about vamping up the display prefs with custom colors and possibly some brand identity to distinguish your projects. I feel this is crucial, since TXP isnt exactly Blogger and is more aimed at web professionals. Clients will be impressed that you went through the “trouble” of branding the CMS. Of course, these advanced prefs wont be available for them, but more on that after this…

Now where was i? Oh yeah – There has also been talk on the forum about rights and permissions and I feel that, rather than defining a few roles with set permissions, why not let us customize every aspect of each user? I would much rather manage my authors like this:

Clicking on the titles will select their subcategories
The top two rows are just for setting permissions.
The last row will control what parts of the admin are actually visible to the client.

This is only the beginning folks. I feel a full on revamp is in the works here.
If only I could code as fast as I design!

jerry · 2006-07-15 22:37:21

ace:

This is just amazing. I can’t wait to get my hands on some finished code and themes. Keep up the good work!

jakob · 2006-07-16 15:35:10

nice going ace. I particularly like the regrouping and gathering of some fields and reduced weight given to some of the special settings like use textile or not. I’ve always wondered why these seldom used fields are at the top-left.

Some thoughts on the mock-ups:

your two recent mock-ups, the “TXP for morons” and the later series of side-menu mock-ups, throw the problem of the admin-side design sharply into focus: simplicity for the non-tech user and speed of access for the expert user. I suspect the second mock-up would swamp non-tech users with too many options. This is, I guess, what the drop-down sought to tackle originally, though I confess I almost never use it. I use firefox’ tabs instead.
putting the menus at the side needs plenty of screen estate – good if you have a new-fangled wide screen monitor but less so if you work on a normal format screen and in a language with long words. In the current dev version, the article list is already quite a bit wider than the previous one (though it doesn’t have to be that way).
Normal users with less rights would see fewer options, which does make things easier for them, but much screen will remain unused.
I like both the admin theme idea and the user permissions idea. To a certain degree, I think to a degree site makers will be able to customise the backend themselves, so better theme handling for the frontend is a priority, but things like setting basic text-size (I’d like to do that separately for UI-elements and textfields) is a good usability plus.

Regarding the code side: in the thread Mary mentioned, she has a version of txplib_head.php which makes the tabs as unordered lists. At present they are in two separate lists – areas then actions – but they could be interleaved into nested ul li lists without much work and you could then achieve your side menu, or other alternatives, e.g. drop down, or perhaps something like this hybrid menu (detailed info here at ALA) which would be another way of saving a page reload without radically changing the top-down layout (tho’ technically it replaces a click and page reload with a rollover instead of a click).

On a less radical note: In the meantime I’ve had a chance to get a simplified list-item rounded-corner tab version of my previous tryouts working on a live site across (modern) browsers (firefox, IE6+, safari, opera). I’ll try and tidy up my files and put them up in the coming week.

Ace of Dubs · 2006-07-16 18:19:57

Interesting points there jakob

Most pro’s already have big screens so real estate is not an issue. This entire admin fits comfortably on my 15” laptop screen. Of course let us not forget the possibility of an elastic layout as well. Point is that we would have total control over how the admin is presented, something I have not seen in any blogging package (and I have tried many!)

Also, I agree that clients would get confused with all the options. That’s why I think we should have the best of both worlds and be able to choose the interface in preferences, as illustrated above.

Thanks for the food for thought though…. gonna chew on this a bit

goncalo.dumas · 2006-07-16 22:22:09

@aceofdubs
I thought that the admin interface was great – beeing simple as it is now, but you are provong it wrong… it can be improved alot.
I’ll be focussing this topic and see if I can help.

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#106 2006-07-06 16:47:35

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#107 2006-07-07 03:19:09

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#108 2006-07-12 20:11:25

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#109 2006-07-12 23:26:36

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#110 2006-07-14 19:00:26

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#111 2006-07-14 20:09:01

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#112 2006-07-14 20:55:35

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#113 2006-07-14 22:34:57

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#114 2006-07-15 01:40:44

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#115 2006-07-15 02:12:42

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#116 2006-07-15 16:45:24

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#117 2006-07-15 22:37:21

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#118 2006-07-16 15:35:10

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#119 2006-07-16 18:19:57

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

#120 2006-07-16 22:22:09

Re: Admin Facelift. Take 3

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