AJAX Manager Ideas for the UI

I had a chance to see an interesting CMS from a company called Elexio. As best I can tell it’s a proprietary backend interface, but man was it sweet.

They have a video demo which illustrates some of the drag and drop features they have in their control panel. I assume it’s using AJAX specifications.
http://www.elexio.com/107572.ihtml

But anyway, I figured it might give some good ideas for the future. I’ve never seen anything like this from other companies yet.

Competitive intelligence sure won’t hurt
Thanks for the pointer, might prove insightful !

I’ll go watch this and check this CMS out while I am there...

wow... one of the more painful demos to watch. Some nice drag and drop things on the file manager, but was there much more?

Ryan : always wisecracking !

;)

Painful how ? I mean other than it’s a little bit long, it’s not that bad...
Remember you offered to take the mike when we do one of those demos

jbjones, just watched it... not sure where the AJAX is here. Noticed Elexio’s website uses ihtml (iframes) and aspx, might be nothing more than iframes and classic js...

One funny thing is how the demonstrator mentions those cascading menu like it’s top notch webdesign (ever heard about usability ? )

That being said, the interface is clean...The calendar and directory stuff are nicely done. Wendy (with the Calendar Snippet) and Garryn (with the A to Z listing snippet) have built snippets that can (or will) do the same though.

Hopefully, when the new manager turn up, we’ll send them a demo of our own

There’s no way to know for sure from the video but it definitely looks like the backend is flash driven. I doubt there’s any actual AJAX being used.

I did like the tabbed interface though. Something to think about for the new manager.

Actually, I bet their manager only runs in IE and uses boatloads of ActiveX stuff.

Well, let’s see.

I know that their interface will run on Firefox 1.1 but has some kind of bug with v1.5. I didn’t think to check on whether it was Flash. But that wasn’t my first impression. Next time I get a hands-on, I’ll dig a little deeper and see what the right click menu brings up.

rthrash: I agree, their front end designs could see lots of improvement before I would call it cutting edge.

The back end was what impressed me.

After further research it appears the backend uses some Javascrip and ASP.NET No flash and no PHP. That’s according to one of the clients whom I asked to ask his rep.

So. Still it’s a clean looking interface.

I believe ASP .Net allow the use of AJAX in v2.0. So it’s a no brainer, and they have a good grown up master template for building a site, and with a lot of built in classes/objects that can reuse accross the website. Sounds really cool, except for the fact that this RAD application is wayy to bloated with all unnessecery features that sometimes just get in the way.

One thing to note, some of the built in object is not supported by other browsers, except IE. I’m not sure whether they already change that in version 2.0 or not, but the funny thing is, their error message need to be viewed using IE, or you won’t be able to expand the message. FYI, I’m using firefox, and it’s base on version .Net 1.1.

Enough saying bad thing about M$. No matter what, it’s still a good product though , especially for RAD.

one of the best interfaces i’ve ever used is this:

http://celumimagine.com/tour_en.htm