Making a Better Download Repository

One thing that keeps sticking out in my mind is that after clicking the tags, it sure would be handy to have the listings sorted alphabetically.

Agreed, I will look into getting that added.

I went to subscribe to the new items Feed:

This page contains the following errors:

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Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.

http://modxcms.com/resource-listing.html&tags=editing

Why are there two Autolink resources? Should one be an extra for the other?

Sorry for lobbing these all in at once, just getting a few cycles to ponder on the repository... you guys have done an amazing job!

The actual resource page itself is a bit confusing I think, from a functional standpoint. Simply put, there’s TOO much to click on leaving users the potential to not click on anything simply because there’s too many choices. For example, the prior releases don’t really need the tag listing, download link or edit button (if you’re so enabled).

Similarly, all the little badges and icons scattered about come is distracting to me. The epicenter of the page (to borrow from 37 Signals) is downloading resources, everything else is simply secondary and should be minimized IMO. I’ll take a stab at putting together an alternate layout if someone can get me a playground set up in the hidden repository folder as I don’t want to break it as it stands now.

In the same vein, I’d like to also vote for listing prior releases on a totally separate page. Extras and the Current Release are what seems to be the two key items that most should access. We should probably build a page explaining how to use the repository and feature it prominently as well once we figure out how we want it in the first place! The fact that it needs explanation and isn’t clear means we can do a better job.

Quote from: Dimmy at Jul 17, 2006, 07:52 AM

If you look at this item in IE http://modxcms.com/SectionRoots-0.9.2-495.html

the the boxes below instructions that have scrollbars are so small that you can hardly reead whats in there.

Just moving this to make it easier to split the topic. I think we’ve addressed everything to date and can start a new ’making it better...’ thread.

Cheers to Garry and Kyle for an amazing job!

Just to go through a few of the items so far:

One thing that keeps sticking out in my mind is that after clicking the tags, it sure would be handy to have the listings sorted alphabetically.

This has been done.

Quote from: rthrash at Jul 21, 2006, 09:57 PM

I went to subscribe to the new items Feed ...

This is now fixed and should work fine.

Quote from: rthrash at Jul 21, 2006, 10:30 PM

http://modxcms.com/resource-listing.html&tags=editing

Why are there two Autolink resources? Should one be an extra for the other?

I have these on my list of things to merge, they are the modifications that rasc made to my autolink module - they should actually be distributed as a single package (as one won’t work without the other) and, once packaged together, need to be an Extra to my main Autolink module.

If you look at this item in IE http://modxcms.com/SectionRoots-0.9.2-495.html

the the boxes below instructions that have scrollbars are so small that you can hardly reead whats in there.

I adjusted the CSS a couple of days back which, on my version of IE6, has fixed the problem. If there are any further problems, then please let me know.

Similarly, all the little badges and icons scattered about come is distracting to me. The epicenter of the page (to borrow from 37 Signals) is downloading resources, everything else is simply secondary and should be minimized IMO. I’ll take a stab at putting together an alternate layout if someone can get me a playground set up in the hidden repository folder as I don’t want to break it as it stands now.

There is certainly some flexibility when it comes to how things are layed out. I will see about getting a few of the resources duplicated into a test folder for you.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet is how the snippet calls are broken when copy pasted from documentation straight to RTE. This has caused some support requests for me allready and when more new users are coming in, i can see how it might come up the most usual problem..

If you copy paste for example the snippet call from here straight to your manager RTE this is what happens:

At the documentation it shows up as:

But the underlying html is actually different because it’s needed to prevent the snippet from running. When pasted to RTE, the text shows all fine but when you look at the source, It has pasted the same source from documentation to there:


Don’t know how this can be fixed though.. Maybe if the text would be in a textarea, it would not copy like that to the clipboard.. not sure though.. if not, maybe there has to be some button to do the copying to clipboard through javascript what would take those html comment tags away..?

@garryn (and kylej, too)
Thanks for the update, and please don’t take my comments as harping! I’m just trying to get it as simple and intuitive as possible so we can really be a leading example of download resources done right... and we’re close, just needs some minor layout tweaks and perhaps a word change here and there. I’m still amazed by what you’ve done!

@doze
Good catch there... definitely deserves some thought.

FYI, I finally got around to creating a general MODx Team user: MODx Team (6331) which we can use for adding the core distributions.

Speaking of these, can we exempt these from the most popular downloads, or probably better should we just bump the download count for past resources? On that same note, can we easily add the past distributions after the fact and modify the download count to reflect the current status?