Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

Skubidu · 2005-11-06 20:52:17

@davidm: I would like your idea of a live preview / quick tag combination. Even more I would like a WYSIWYG editor that’s not working with (X)HTML in the background but with Textile so you would be able to switch between WYSIWYG and Textile everytime you want. For me textile is okay but I know many people working with me in a project that don’t really understand that way of editing text with textile and would like to have a more WYSIWYG feeling.

Sencer · 2005-11-06 21:17:33

I bet that if mobile phones and text-messaging would have taken off big time before the advent of the personal computer, we no doubt would have requests for plugins that emulated a phone’s keyboard (0-9) for inputting text to “improve usability” by “giving the user something familiar”. But that’s just my personal opinion. ;)

btw: I seeded a (simple) dashboard-plugin, I wonder how great the interest will be, and whether we’ll see more comprehensive dashboard-plugins: http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?pid=84885#p84885

zem · 2005-11-07 03:10:01

Just to add another spanner to the works: the crockery branch already supports arbitrary markup types via plugins (think Markdown, etc).

davidm · 2005-11-07 09:10:47

These are both excellent news :-)

Thanks Sencer, Thanks Zem !

6sigma · 2005-11-08 01:37:22

Usability in the tool and in the things the tool produces seems a worthy goal. To that end, I think Txp web sites should be known for having great print styles and out-of-the-box PDA/phone/small screen(iPod?) versions. A stylesheet or stylesheet “drop-in” that covers the latest thoughts about printing would be great. Two articles on this subject are here and here. It would also be great if an appropriate CSS stylesheet for PDA viewing of sites were available.

By the way, if these things are readily (and easily) available already, point me in the right direction.

davidwang · 2005-11-08 09:16:10

Preset stylesheets like what 6sigma suggests are probably difficult to implement because not many Textpattern users will stick with the default templates and styles. So once you’ve edited your templates your print and small screen styles will be obsolete.

I think we need to first take a step back and identify what Textpatterns’ main purpose/objective is first. For me it is a publishing platform. If it was a blogging software then the out-of-the-box styles and stuff like theme switchers make sense. But as a publishing platform I feel such features its not very necessary.

Then we also need to consider usability. The usability of the tool is the efficiency in which an individual can complete a given task with that tool. If we follow on thinking of Textpattern as a publishing platform the improvements to its usability should specifically be concerning the publishing aspects of it. Therefore, the useful suggestions in this thread so far IMHO are:

1. Improving the write tab

2. A post editor, not necessarily WYSIWYG but maybe just quicktags

3. I’ve already tooted my own horn with my dashboard idea – some of you prefer to call it an overview page.

And I would like to add another suggestion – improving the comments tab. I think we should add another view/tab to the comments tab like pending/moderated comments and more options for bulk editing and filtering.

hakjoon · 2005-11-08 13:29:45

tinyMCE has a setup that let’s it spit back BBcode. I wonder if something like that could be tweaked to generate Textile.

Also tinyMCE and FCKeditor seems to work equally well on all browesers except for Safari and Opera, but both are making movements towards safari (Midas like support was only added in the last version of Safari) so no need for a windows computer to support it. Also at least with tinyMCE you can restrict it to only spit back only tags and attributes you want to allow.

I would love to do a Quicktags + live preview setup but I wonder if there is a way to somehow overlay the write area so you don’t have two areas to keep track of. I would love that, but don’t really know how something that could be implemented or even if it could.

I also think there are other usability issues other then a WYSIWIG editor. We get requests a lot for browsing by category in the images tab and I can see how once you have MANY articles the article tab might not scale as well.

WYSIWIG can be done as a plugin imo.

wet · 2005-11-08 13:41:42

May I add some of my recurring annyoances?

ability to collapse / expand section details
jump to previously active section after save
sorting/expanding&collapsing of lists (image, file) consistent with and expanding from article list behaviour
jump to the plug-in entry after loading a plugin.
jump to previous position in article body/excerpt textarea after intermittent save

No show stoppers, but for me it’s about those details which would make day-to-day operation more deligthful.

davidm · 2005-11-10 16:27:50

Wet, this is cool :)

If we all make a clean and precise list like this, we could build some kind of usability improvement plan and submit this to the dev team… really nice input :) !

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#25 2005-11-06 20:52:17

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#26 2005-11-06 21:17:33

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#27 2005-11-07 03:10:01

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#28 2005-11-07 09:10:47

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#29 2005-11-08 01:37:22

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#30 2005-11-08 09:16:10

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#31 2005-11-08 13:29:45

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#32 2005-11-08 13:41:42

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

#33 2005-11-10 16:27:50

Re: Textpattern and usability : how can we improve ?

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