UI (and other) changes in Revolution?

Quote from: BobRay at Jun 25, 2009, 05:02 PM

I’m not sure how well the tabs would work with Quick Create and Quick Update and having them as an alternative would create some severe headaches for documentation and tutorial creators.

The tabs/panels debate is only for the main content panels, not the Quick windows (or any window for that matter).

EDIT: Please leave feedback about the suggested changes to the right side of the Revo UI!
Quote from: splittingred at Jun 25, 2009, 11:42 AM

We had it as tabs initially, but that idea was shot down in early alpha development in favor of the panels, much to my dismay. This, in my opinion, is still up for debate which is better.

Since the tabs/accordion issue is still open for debate, lets do a poll on it. I am in favor of tabs.

I have attached a screen shot of several UI suggestions.

1) Tabs instead of accordion on the left (I showed the files tab as active, but normally it would be the Resource tree). EDIT: Moved to: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,39292.0.html

2) Move "Page Settings" back to a tab on the right and call it "Advanced Settings". Most of these settings are not used frequently enough to justify them causing the document tree to be hidden. EDIT: This has been noted.

3) Rename "Resources Settings" as "Basic Settings" and move everything except the most common settings into the Advanced Settings tab, making the the Basic Settings tab easier to use and take up less space. On the Basic Settings tab put "Use Template" *first*, since it determines what other fields should be shown (and it makes the most sense to choose your page type at the very beginning).

4) Move Template Variables to a panel and make it more obvious that these options depend on the template that you choose. (Something like ManagerManager could be used to move these to a tab if desired.)

5) When clicking a resource in the tree, make the default action Edit, as discussed for Evolution.

Just to stick my oar in the water here; the accordion is really slick and clever, but it’s horribly annoying the way it keeps redrawing all the time. Something a bit less restless would be nice.

Really great ideas Ryan. Well done and definitely worth noodling on.

I too love the tabs implementation over the accordion.
Maybe we should start a poll?

Just my 2 cents here, the top menu layout is fine but I think we should look at some kind of secondary pull down structure.

I can see the components menu in particular being overly long for some users, maybe we should group components by function or something(perhaps like the tagging in extras?) so we have grouped 3PC’s rather than just a long list as we do now.

I understand that this isn’t simple but rather now than later, it may mean adding attributes to 3PC transport packages that say what group they are in so this is done automatically on installation.

Quote from: shamblett at Aug 28, 2009, 03:09 PM

Just my 2 cents here, the top menu layout is fine but I think we should look at some kind of secondary pull down structure.

I can see the components menu in particular being overly long for some users, maybe we should group components by function or something(perhaps like the tagging in extras?) so we have grouped 3PC’s rather than just a long list as we do now.

I understand that this isn’t simple but rather now than later, it may mean adding attributes to 3PC transport packages that say what group they are in so this is done automatically on installation.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but can’t this be done now with categories? SPForm puts all its sub-components into an SPForm category on install so they take up less room in the tree.

When the tree starts getting out of hand, it’s pretty easy to create your own categories and dump things into them. I think I’d prefer that to having somebody else dictate the categories although I wouldn’t be violently opposed to preset categories if they were well-chosen.

It occurs to me that 3PCs are already tagged with categories in the repository (although I’m not crazy about the structure).

Here is the poll for whether the left side should be tabs, accordion, or collapsible.

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,39292.0.html

Quote from: shamblett at Aug 28, 2009, 03:09 PM

Just my 2 cents here, the top menu layout is fine but I think we should look at some kind of secondary pull down structure.
I can see the components menu in particular being overly long for some users, maybe we should group components by function or something(perhaps like the tagging in extras?) so we have grouped 3PC’s rather than just a long list as we do now.
I understand that this isn’t simple but rather now than later, it may mean adding attributes to 3PC transport packages that say what group they are in so this is done automatically on installation.

It’s on the JIRA queue to allow for deeper nesting of modMenu items in the top menu, but we just haven’t gotten there yet.

But as for pre-defined categories...well, I don’t think that will happen, b/c it would be way too difficult to tell 3PC devs which category to use, or what if they didnt fit into a category, or what if the category wasnt there, etc.

And, if the user has a ton of Components, they can always rearrange the menu item.

I would like to get more feedback from people on the changes that I suggested on the right side of the Revo interface (see my post with the screen shot above on this page).

I read through the Tabs or Panels discussion again (http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,37130.0.html) and I think that the layout suggestions in my post above (a mixture of tabs and panels, with all frequently used info on one page) may be the best default layout. Please give feedback as to whether you agree or disagree!

As a quick recap of the Tabs or Panels discussion, I have pulled out some quotes that seem relevant to this discussion:

the layout can now be toggled between tabs (default) and portal panels via the setting ’manager_use_tabs’.

it would be far better to go with one design, and then have others available later as drop-in replacements

I definitely don’t like not being able to edit all content at once: page title, content, TVs, etc. Page settings, access permissions and other such things could be in their own tabs and I’d be perfectly content.

In Evo, I have forgotten to set my new documents as published on many an occasion because that setting was "hidden" in another tab. It even seems (at times) a "waste" of a click since the only thing that usually takes me to the "page settings" tab in Evo is to click on "published"!