Revolution Manager User Experience and UI. Help make it amazing.#

Now that MODx Revolution 2.0 is out, we are hearing some people have different expectations of the Manager User Experience and UI. We are always on the lookout for ways to make MODx better and we need you to let us know specifically what you'd like to see improved.

Some of your suggestions may result in better documentation and some in application changes but we can't make it better without your help.

Some Suggestion Examples:

Great: "It would be better if it was easier to create a document because it takes x steps. You might try something like a quick create" Perfect and clear.
Good: "Feature X is difficult to navigate and I'd love it if it worked this way" We need to know what you don't like and why and what might make it better.
Poor: "I don't like feature X." We can't really do anything with this.

If you think you have a legitimate change or feature request, better than putting it here, put it directly into Jira, our bug and feature request application and we'll assess it and discuss it with the development team.

Your constructive, positive criticism will make MODx amazing.

(Thanks to David Brunelle for asking for a place to post feedback.)

I have noticed there are many instances of functions that are not readily apparent to a user. It seems to me these might be real barriers for new user adoption.
For instance,

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• System settings: if you want to change a setting you have to double click. This isn't an obvious behavior. It's also not obvious when you have changed a setting, but it is unsaved. I have lost changes a couple of times already.

• Package Management, Updates Available: you can see the available updates, but have to right click to begin the update process. Doesn't seem like such a big deal, but it took a forum post for me to figure it out.

• System settings: Organization of system settings seems to be a little harder to discern when compared to Evo. The old tabs allowed the user to see an organizational structure that you could drill down to more quickly. Right now you just have to click through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Seems much harder to track down on which page a setting is located.

[/list]

Quote from: pleth at Aug 17, 2010, 09:30 AM

System settings: Organization of system settings seems to be a little harder to discern when compared to Evo. The old tabs allowed the user to see an organizational structure that you could drill down to more quickly. Right now you just have to click through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Seems much harder to track down on which page a setting is located.

For that you can use the filters on the top of the grid which are really great helper to avoid messing with 4 or more settings pages.

You can even directly type the field you're searching, it's quite easy but i concede it, not really natural.

Quote from: lossendae at Aug 17, 2010, 09:39 AM

Quote from: pleth at Aug 17, 2010, 09:30 AM

System settings: Organization of system settings seems to be a little harder to discern when compared to Evo. The old tabs allowed the user to see an organizational structure that you could drill down to more quickly. Right now you just have to click through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Seems much harder to track down on which page a setting is located.

For that you can use the filters on the top of the grid which are really great helper to avoid messing with 4 or more settings pages.

You can even directly type the field you're searching, it's quite easy but i concede it, not really natural.

Unfortunately, the filter only works well if you know what you are looking for.

I have usability concerns since first impression is that application is way too much code bloating the base.

For instance, this amount of code was needed for a simple "Colapse Tree" button:



Having that in mind, who know how much bloat was added to other elements which makes whole thing # needlessly crowded.. the backend is really poorly coded IMHO since its possible to make that one single button whole lot more simpler and quicker than this. Whats wrong with simple <a href=""></a> or <button> elements styled via css to look exactly the same as these if wanted?

My other frustration is unbelievable amount of JS code used since it really makes hard for people with no brand-new computers and components to accomplish the task with constant hiccups from buttons which do not react on clicks to hung document saving and eternally lasting "Please Wait, Saving" window where only browser page reload helps.

Settings are really badly organized and not obvious and those found in Evo are far more better solution for majority of people, from UX point of view.

And what i find worst than everything is that little floating Save bar which constantly gets on my way. It doesn't make sense that such menu stays there when there is bunch of free space on other places which could be used better to make menu more accessible and distraction free.

Also, usage of new CSS technologies such as text-shadow, box-shadow and border-radius have huge impact on speed of Revo UI since some of them are quite resource demanding and generally not needed in tool which serves to manage the website content.

Please, do not make a video game out of CMS which has such great potential, put it on a diet! People won't buy new hi-end hardware or change their habits and browser choices for sake of editing of the web page!

I generally love Revo for potential and possibilities it offer but i dislike the UI/UX which are little way too much for application of this purpose.

Another thing is Code Standards MODx preaches, it sounds awesome but..where are those code standards implemented in MODx alone?

Please do something!

I have some suggestions that I would like to discuss here before putting them in JIRA.

- The drop-down menus do not work with the keyboard
- Make the tree stay open after saving resources/elements
- Fix the loading for ever issue (I think there is a patch for this on the works)
- I create new tabs and TVs and then move the TVs and some fields to the new tab.
It would be great to be able to select the tab where the new TV would go and select the action(s)
instead of setting all the rules one by one.
- Package the Form Customization Rules in PackMan.
- Bulk pick of elements to include in PackMan, i.e., ability to tick the Chunks we want to
select instead of doing it one by one.


The last two are PackMan related but also are part of the GUI experience...
if you want I could remove them and put them in another thread.

I would like to be able to easily have multiple items in different tabs. If I want to have a page, a template and chunk open in tabs I have to open a page from the top drop down menu ( i.e. Manage user, system settings, etc) in a new tab, then back into the chunk or template.

Its a big hassle to jump back and forth between multiple resources and elements without having them in multiple tabs in the browser.

@purpler

The code you're referring to is coming straight from Extjs and therefore is not generated by MODx but by the library itself.

Extjs is know to be blown that way (the tab, which are simple nowadays are a real mess of table under table under table).
Now, Extjs will release a brand new version later this year which will be much more in phase with actual standard of simplicity.

That put aside, Extjs is absolutely powerful to build very complicated UI 'like Revo) in no time. It's uncomparable with jQuery (or mootools, or xxx lib here). Or at least not without the help of several people.
The manager interface as it is has been made by only one person, which is a tremendous work.

I'm confident that the next version of ExtJS will solve the actual bloated code.

Buttons are CSS issues, the paddings are set on the surrounding table and not on the actual link (which is not good at all) but that can be fixed.

As i said, the setting table is not bad at all. I can found any settings in seconds compared to evo. But i can understand your point. Imho, It's more about presentation than features from that side.

That being said, it would be nice to have a less strong/heavy manager, built on top of a less RIA library like jQuery. But again, it's not an easy job to do...

Quote from: charliez at Aug 17, 2010, 10:18 AM

1. The drop-down menus do not work with the keyboard
2. Make the tree stay open after saving resources/elements
3. Fix the loading for ever issue (I think there is a patch for this on the works)
4. I create new tabs and TVs and then move the TVs and some fields to the new tab. It would be great to be able to select the tab where the new TV would go and select the action(s) instead of setting all the rules one by one.
5. Package the Form Customization Rules in PackMan.
6. Bulk pick of elements to include in PackMan, i.e., ability to tick the Chunks we want to select instead of doing it one by one.

1. This is something we can look into, though I bet it's related to ExtJS. Please file an improvement in JIRA.
2. This is already fixed in Git.
3. This is being addressed currently, and only happens in certain environments.
4. Can you elaborate on this?
5. We might be introducing FC sets and/or scripts and such in 2.1, that said, this is (like you said) a PackMan issue rather than a Revo one.
6. Again, like you said, a PackMan issue, unrelated to the Revo core, which is the topic of this thread.

Thanks Charlie. Good feedback.

I think there's a great opportunity to keep the power and speed of iteration that Ext brings us and to combine it with an alternate end-user oriented Manager context that is "Dad-simple" ... easy and intuitive enough your Dad can get it without a ton of training ... goal should be login to trained in under 20 minutes. With Revo, it's entirely possible to have multiple Manager systems. And the settings page would never be a part of the Dad-simple tool.

That said, there is some really great feedback in this thread, so please keep it coming!