The new manager - looking for best practice solutions

Just a couple of comments:

I preferred the fast-appearing drop-down menus. With the horizontal menu, you can’t move your mouse in a straight line from the top menu choice to the lower one without losing the lower choices. You have to move the mouse down, and then over, which I find somewhat annoying.

In IE7, (the last time I looked) the resource content goes off the bottom of the screen and there’s no scroll bar to reach it.

I’d prefer to have the tree there by default with a way to hide it. With it hidden initially, it’s another step I have to tell users to perform to edit or create a resource.

Quote from: BobRay at Dec 09, 2008, 10:19 PM

I preferred the fast-appearing drop-down menus. With the horizontal menu, you can’t move your mouse in a straight line from the top menu choice to the lower one without losing the lower choices. You have to move the mouse down, and then over, which I find somewhat annoying.

I agree 100% with BobRay on this one. The original drop-down menus were much more usable IMO. In addition, implementing additional flyout menus from the drop-downs will be more practical than trying to implement drop-downs from the horizontal sub-menu.

Quote from: BobRay at Dec 09, 2008, 10:19 PM

In IE7, (the last time I looked) the resource content goes off the bottom of the screen and there’s no scroll bar to reach it.

A lot of work during beta cycles will be focused on cross-browser support (i.e. bending over backwards for IE as usual).

Quote from: BobRay at Dec 09, 2008, 10:19 PM

I’d prefer to have the tree there by default with a way to hide it. With it hidden initially, it’s another step I have to tell users to perform to edit or create a resource.

When I first encounted this new dashboard, I felt the same way (and said something like, oh, how web 2.0...). In fact, I didn’t know what to do to reveal the normal view I was expecting for almost a minute, when I finally saw the View Tree link. It really had me stumped.

Quote from: OpenGeek at Dec 10, 2008, 07:19 PM

. . .

I agree 100% with BobRay on this one.

Obviously someone has hijacked OpenGeek’s account (or his body has been taken over by an alien entity).

Bob, Going off to mark this day on his calendar.

ROFLMAO!!!

Actually I will agree that the desktop app analogy works better with the dropdowns than the 2nd tier menu. I’d (in know I say I don’t like dropdowns but there is a time and a place for them and apps are it.) End users and devs/designers alike are used to the UI of desktop apps. If it works like that no one isl likely to complain.

BobRay I think the stars of sense are what caused Jason to agree with you. Great minds think alike just rarely at the same time.

Cheers

I wonder if I could jump in here a bit late. I haven’t posted in a long time, but follow Modx closely. I haven’t had time though to really look at Revolution.

Reading this thread made me wonder what the challenges would be to structure the Manager in a way that it can be completely customized. Imagine a repository of templates, snippets etc. all for building different types of Manager setups for blogs, storefronts, simplified for basic users, advanced etc.. This is Modx, after all. If I understand things correctly, this is currently not the case with Revolution. I’m not talking about Manager themes, and if I understand correctly, custom Manager pages in Revolution are addons, not something that could create a completely new manager. Or am I mistaken?

You’re not wrong. The Revolution Manager is highly customizable.

Here’s a great tutorial from Splittingred that walks you through creating some custom Manager pages:

http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/~splittingred/2008/07/10/Creating+Custom+Manager+Pages+for+a+3rd+Party+Component%2C+Pt.+I

Yes, I scanned through that very nice tutorial but all I could see for sure is that it creates add-on Manager pages. What about complete replacement pages or even a whole new Manager? It sure would be cool, not to mention that everyone posting opinions on this thread could still have it his or her own way.

Ok, I’ve poked around some more, and according to http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,31718.msg192503.html#msg192503, we’re not there just yet but it’s at least planned:

the UI for the Manager is to be decoupled from the core so in theory it will be possible to build out themes or alternative Manager Contexts that would work better for some people.

I’m guessing this one will take a while.

The revolution sure sounds exciting, to add my opinions;

I found the current Revolution admin intimidating from a user prospective, with the standard ExtJS interface it looks more like a desktop application than an online web 2.0 application.

Initial feedback points:

• The ExtJS interface uses a lot of tables to present information, seen in tools / System Settings, I initally found these tables annoying and feel they could hinder usability. The System Settings table hides helpful tips requiring users to open hidden rows. Requires many clicks and condenses information into rows.
• Nice to see the continuation of the content tree within the left panel, however I did miss clicking the icon to show the sub menu. Seems to work better for me when I click an icon.
• I would perfer room above the top main menu, this area could be used for the new modx logo (top left), I would also like to see an option were admin users can upload a custom logo (nice to include client logo)
• The drop down menu works well, it could be further improved with a feature I’ve seen at Interspire. Admin users could select to show helpful hints below admin link titles
• I’d like to see an option under site / new doc for the selection of type of doc to create. As any user of eZ Publish will notice within the admin panel, users have an option to select the type of doc to create. This would really speed up the content entry and remove the requirement of template selection within content area.
• Within the edit page it would be nice to remove the ’Resource Content’ input as not all content items need a content area (new doc could include folders, images etc with simple text line inputs), if I need a text field I would add it through variables, hence remove the additional ’Template Variables’ tab. I don’t believe clients understand the term ’Template Variable’ as such this will lead to major confusion so why not just open selected creation page with template variables via the menu
• It could be nice to include an internal notes (to do) tab, as seen in the Silverware admin
• It would be nice to see past edits, content auditing within the left panel
• The Moveable type admin features an excellent template edit panel, with tag referencing, template insert tag selection list and referencing to helpful resources. I know this has also be planned for WordPress, Expression Engine features a template archiving tool which all add to the template modification process from the browser

Some additional interface designs worth viewing:
http://movabledemo.com
http://www.interspire.com/websitepublisher/godemo.php
http://ez.no/ezpublish/demo

I hope the above points help with building modx Revolution into a leading solution.