A proposal for a distraction-free Admin Write Panel (Feat. Slide&Hide)

candyman · 2015-05-15 09:34:55

Hello everybody, looking at this Hive theme mockup by Phil, I’ve thought do a distraction free TXP admin theme.

In these days I was looking at Toby Zerner’s awesome Flarum demo and I’ve discovered an awesome – javascript powered – way to manage show&hide thread titles. Simply ~~click into this interesting thread :)~~ go to Flarum Demo Forum, choose a thread to read then move your mouse pointer to the left edge and see!

So, ‘cause I like some distraction-free editor like the Soulmen’s Ulysses, I’ve though that the Textpattern admin default interface could be “improved” by hiding the options panels on the right.

I mean this: when you open the TXP Write Panel you’ll see nothing but the editor and when you need to specify other things, such as the categories (Sort and display panel), the publishing date (Date and time panel) and so on, you would have to move your mouse on the right just to make the panels appear with a slide effect (from right to left) and placing over the article and excerpt edit area.

The Tools Sidebar has it’s own slider bar (on the left) to scroll if the Option Panel are too for the browser window height.

On the other side, moving the mouse on the left will make appear the list of published articles (in the same way of the Flarum forum): just click on the title and the choosen article will appear in the editor, ready for some corrections (for example).

I’m not able to create this but I’m sure some gurus out there could. So, what do you think?

Last edited by candyman (2015-05-15 10:44:08)

Bloke · 2015-05-15 09:57:46

candyman wrote #290792:

move your mouse pointer to the left edge and see!

Interesting. Though my browser windows was too thin at first so nothing happened. And the drawer kept disappearing at inopportune moments as I moved the mouse, which was kind of annoying. But I can see the sentiment. I’m curious though, how does it work on mobile? Is it swipe-in-from-the-left to achieve the same thing?

It certainly fits with our “Just Write” mantra, though I might be tempted to put things like the Publish/Save button on permanent display. Not sure. Maybe having it in the panel is a nicer workflow: write, slide, publish.

If nothing else, with the improved markup Phil’s put together, this should be a cinch to achieve as an admin theme. Someone might even be able to do it for 4.5.7 with two slideable side panels!

philwareham · 2015-05-15 09:58:10

Interesting. I’m mulling over the admin side layout and I already have an independently scrolling main content and sidebar area I could implement (I use it here). I wouldn’t want a mouse-hover anyway, rather a toggle button.

The same would also be useful for hiding clutter on the pages/form pages (i.e., for hiding the tag builder).

candyman · 2015-05-15 10:30:49

Bloke wrote #290793:

Though my browser windows was too thin at first so nothing happened.

You’re right: clickin’ on the link that lead you inside the thread make the effect disappear. Maybe the js doesn’t load. It’s better to start from Flarum’s homepage and then choose a thread to see it.

philwareham wrote #290794:

I wouldn’t want a mouse-hover anyway, rather a toggle button.

Probably is better: the first time I saw that effect I was surprised ‘cause I found it unintentionally.

philwareham · 2015-05-15 10:36:29

Yes. The save button would need to be independent of any toggled sidebar. I will separate the sidebar column from the main content column first like on my own site – we can then discuss from there.

Give men a few days. I’m hoping my day work calms down a bit next week.

candyman · 2015-05-15 12:30:46

Bloke wrote #290793:

It certainly fits with our “Just Write” mantra, though I might be tempted to put things like the Publish/Save button on permanent display. Not sure. Maybe having it in the panel is a nicer workflow: write, slide, publish.

If possible, I’ll avoid the “slide” step too. In Flarum, when you decide to Start a discussion, a box appear just to choose the Category, then this popup closes and you can start to write.

In TXP, we could use Gocom’s raw_wrach plugin to choose the necessary section before and then use the distration-free plain layout (just the Title, Boby and Excerpt fields with the Publish/Save button moved inside the main window).

In this way we could activate the side panel only for specific admin needs (changin’ the author of the article, date, section, category or just to fill some custom fields) and also the toggle button could be unnecessary (if you need for something that you know there is, you start to look for it, don’t you?).

Beside the Publish/Save button could be useful an “add image” button with an image loader from TXP gallery.

But we must wait Phil’s achievements and see the effect before to decide if this could be an interesting solution :)

Last edited by candyman (2015-05-15 12:34:40)

Destry · 2015-05-16 14:46:21

I like the title of this thread alone. Subscribed.

(Where this was supposed to go originally.)

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#1 2015-05-15 09:34:55