Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

nabrown78 · 2009-04-04 00:35:14

“If the concept is folders, make them folders” – How about abandoning the folders look altogether? Forget tabs. People get web hierarchy at this point, and they don’t need the folders metaphor. Simple links/boxes would look cleaner anyway, and easier to customize with new colors. Plus you don’t have to deal with sliding-doors, images, or shadows.

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On the left column, I definitely agree it needs some re-grouping. It really annoys me that the tabbing to the next field doesn’t work consistently as it should. I think this would be helped by grouping, using fieldsets, making sure shown order reflects the source order, and not overriding the browser’s default behaviour.

For me, the Use Textile menus and the Override form menu go together – perhaps in a fieldset labeled “Formatting”?

Arrows work fine, but +/- again eliminates the need for images.

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I love the idea of the little article info bubble at the top – especially if it could alert the writer that their article has not yet been saved.

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I agree the excerpt shouldn’t go above the Body. A lot of people (myself included) don’t know what the excerpt should say until they’ve written the Body, and likely will be editing the Body more than the excerpt. Also, many people use auto excerpting or no excerpt at all.

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I agree that the “preview” tabs could be moved – I didn’t even ever notice they were there for a while, but the link names are tricky. I can tell you none of my clients are going to know what the hell Rendering is going to mean. Plus the Texti(ile) is not really a preview.

Maybe a focus on what you do at each link, like: Edit | View HTML | View Text Preview?

That’s a little cumbersome, but just an idea. I like Jakob’s idea too.

I think the preview on site would be scary for clients – if they were taken to their article on the site, they might think they’d published it without wanting too, or lost data.

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“Create new Article” sounds good; simply “New Article” seems sufficient. I’m wondering if this should be a nice large button, rather than just a text link that blends in to the page. Also, I think the Publish button should be moved up to near the Status box. It makes sense to be grouped with that info, and if you have the advanced options open, the Publish button can be pushed below the fold. It’s also easy for someone to click “Create new” without having clicked Publish, and lose their data.

Can we get rid of the admin tables? That would be such a huge help for customizing.

Also, other than providing feedback, is there any other way to contribute to this effort?

wet · 2009-04-04 03:36:05

In the next release, Textpattern will sport a themeable admin interface and other customisation possibilities through the means of pluggable_ui(), so you can basically design and code (or have someone do it for you) your own interface within the constraints given.

jan · 2009-04-27 18:05:10

@ Wet: sound great!

Some other improvement I’ve been thinking of lately:
I think it would really make things look more structured if the articles in [Content > Articles] would be grouped by section,
or if it would at least be possible to browse by section.

Certainly one can always use the search box, but I think it makes sense to follow the structure of the website front-end by grouping per section. Especially when a site contains lots of articles in different sections and categories, the initial unfiltered list of articles can be a bit intimidating for the not so tech savvy client.

What are your thoughts on this guys?

Last edited by jan (2009-04-27 18:05:35)

saccade · 2009-04-27 18:13:53

Hi jan,
In my eyes this already is working:

1. you can sort by the list columns (and so if you make “sections” the sorting column have what you ask for).

2. use the “filter”-feature of the “search” (it is far more than a search) and choose section as the criteria. So you’ll get articles of a section (or similar sections containing the same search term)

What I’d only suggest as an enhancement is simply to label the “search” as what it really is: “search and filter” so users will understand its capabilities faster.

nabrown78 · 2009-04-27 22:02:00

I agree – the column-by-column sort is very handy, and is perhaps not as immediately obvious as it could be. And the search input could also be more user-friendly or just better-labeled, as saccade suggests.

Bloke · 2009-04-28 07:34:37

jan wrote:

I think it would really make things look more structured if the articles in [Content > Articles] would be grouped by section,

Further to this, sometimes I kind of wish it would remember the sort order I used last and use it again next time I visit the Article List tab… it always drops back to sorting by Posted date and on some sites (calendars with lots of articles in future, for example) sometimes you just want to always have the list sorted by section or some other column. But I guess if this is changed by default, people who like it always reverting to Posted will be annoyed, so this is probably just one of things I need to live with/work around.

saccade · 2009-04-28 07:48:32

Yes, Bloke, your exactly right, [thinking of lots of future calendar events for a whole year in advance, all the same – and getting shivers] some kind of remembrance would be great.
(But this perhaps might be a field for plugins – for there are surely very different requirements to meet)

Last edited by saccade (2009-04-28 07:49:43)

Destry · 2009-04-28 07:51:32

Remembering a preferred sort order would be a nice addition, and I don’t think it would cause too much pissing if changed. I assume the records still sort by date secondarily within a section sorting, so if you have one section that is dominant (blog articles, eg.) then all those articles are still anti-chrono. The difference is you would not have to hunt/peck through them to find the other “static” section posts or whatever.

This would be a nice mod.

Ed. Then again, it’s not too hard to do it now with a click or two. :)

Last edited by Destry (2009-04-28 07:52:57)

Destry · 2009-04-28 08:16:42

What would be really, really nice is a default 3-column sort in the order: sections (alphabetical), status (alphabetical), posted (anti-chrono). That’s not something you can do now.

jan · 2009-04-28 18:02:26

I agree that remembering the last sorting method would already be a good (and unobtrusive) improvement.

Still, this doesn’t really guarantee much overview.
Right now, I’m working on a site which has about 80 articles in a section the name of which begins with an A, and additionally, the site contains about 10 sections, each containing about 10 articles.

You can imagine the resulting view in the article listing: there’s little to see except those 80 articles in the section that happens to be high up the alphabetical order.

If the user wants to access other sections of the site, s/he has to type in the section in the filter box.

Wouldn’t some kind of sidebar on the left be an idea, containing all sections, categories and maybe other filtering criteria?
The filter/search box could then also be placed in that sidebar, to keep the overall lay-out simple.

I realize that this is perhaps a job for plugins (at least at this moment) but how would you guys feel about a sidebar?

Last edited by jan (2009-04-28 18:03:11)

saccade · 2009-04-28 18:18:02

Hi Jan,
I’m also working on sites with a lot of articles (400, 750 and the biggest 2400) and sometimes have to pick from the whole time range of them.

I’m not sure about a sidebar. Surely as an option offered by plugins, but I’m extensively/often working on the article catalogue(s) (I prefer that term instead of “list”) and using the detailed overview a lot – a sidebar would make the usable area much smaller and thus reduce the usefulness of the catalogue.

I’d prefer an “extension” tab e.g. for setting up “defaults” (pre-sets) and e.g. a select list of those individual pre-sets on top of the catalogue.
With this in mind it’s definitely a plugin-type of task.

Last edited by saccade (2009-04-28 18:35:13)

jan · 2009-04-28 23:12:55

Hey saccade,

What exactly do you mean by ‘defaults’ or ‘pre-sets’? Default filters or something?

By the way, your mention of a select box makes me think of an improvement of the filter box which would make the searching at least a bit faster:

Display a select box for all the criteria that have a finite and queriable set of matches, i.e. sections, categories and statuses.

Why would anyone want to do a search on these criteria? Doesn’t one always want to match a specific section, category or status? I mean, I don’t think it’s necessary to be able to search on the partial name of such an item.

This could be easily done with JQuery; you just display a select box instead of a text box where needed, and query the list of options with an AJAX call.

Forgive me if I’m talking past you saccade, I just thought this was a sensible idea by itself :-)

Last edited by jan (2009-04-28 23:13:34)

redbot · 2009-04-28 23:18:37

I think this plugin does something similar. It seems to be no more available though.

jan · 2009-04-28 23:31:12

redbot wrote:

I think this plugin does something similar. It seems to be no more available though.

Oh, hahah even better!
It’s available, the download link on the textpattern.org page leads to his website where the plugin is listed at the top.

wet · 2009-04-29 07:13:51

Destry wrote:

Remembering a preferred sort order would be a nice addition, and I don’t think it would cause too much pissing if changed.

Let’s see…

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#16 2009-04-04 00:35:14

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#17 2009-04-04 03:36:05

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#18 2009-04-27 18:05:10

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#19 2009-04-27 18:13:53

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#20 2009-04-27 22:02:00

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#21 2009-04-28 07:34:37

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#22 2009-04-28 07:48:32

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#23 2009-04-28 07:51:32

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#24 2009-04-28 08:16:42

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#25 2009-04-28 18:02:26

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#26 2009-04-28 18:18:02

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#27 2009-04-28 23:12:55

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#28 2009-04-28 23:18:37

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#29 2009-04-28 23:31:12

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

#30 2009-04-29 07:13:51

Re: Slight semantic "enhancements" to admin-side 4.0.9.

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