New manager dashboard - post alpha-6

I’ve been extremely impressed with Revolution so far and decided to watch the SVN branch and see what other awesome work you’re going to be sending our way, and I noticed a few days ago you’ve started creating a manager dashboard so I thought I’d take a look!

I know it’s in its early stages (this is SVN after all) so I hope you don’t mind me giving a bit of feedback already! You’re probably already aware of some of the issues so apologies if I’m repeating what you already know.

Firstly I’d like to say it looks pretty damn decent! Although I do like the drop-down style menus in alpha-6, the "tabbed menu" on the dashboard is also quite nifty. However it does stretch off screen with a long menu like "Tools" (hence I can’t get to the system config.)

Another thing is the document tree - are you planning on keeping that showing on every screen? Like on some screens it’s irrelevant (e.g. adding a user), and when you take the "Resource Groups" screen, it’s actually duplicated because you’ve also got a resource browser as part of the main content. Is this going to be so it only shows the document tree when you need it?

On the menu, where the separators used to be in the drop-down menus, you’ve got a "-". If you click on the "-" in the Components menu (which is empty) you get a dashboard-in-a-dashboard! On the subject what’s likely to be in the Components menu? (This is also empty in my alpha-6 install.)

The "Site Schedule" menu item in the "Reports" menu is showing as "site_schedule."

Finally, the 3 icons in the green panel, top-left, what are they going to be? At the minute they all take you back to the dashboard.

The colour and theme of the new dashboard fits in great with the new logo and the look of your main website and forums! This truly is great work guys, well done - you’ve got me all thirsty for beta-1 now, can’t wait!!!

Forgot to mention, while installing - the first time round it created all the tables but didn’t fill any data in them and sent back a blank screen. The error log said:

"[2008-12-04 18:01:02] (ERROR @ /modx-svn/setup/index.php) Package /srv/www/htdocs/modx-svn/core/packages/core.transport.zip does not exist"

So I copied the core.transport.zip from alpha-6 into the right place, re-ran the setup and it worked.

Quote from: Pandy06269 at Dec 04, 2008, 12:56 PM

Firstly I’d like to say it looks pretty damn decent! Although I do like the drop-down style menus in alpha-6, the "tabbed menu" on the dashboard is also quite nifty. However it does stretch off screen with a long menu like "Tools" (hence I can’t get to the system config.)

Update your SVN, run a build, run setup. That will fix that.

Another thing is the document tree - are you planning on keeping that showing on every screen? Like on some screens it’s irrelevant (e.g. adding a user), and when you take the "Resource Groups" screen, it’s actually duplicated because you’ve also got a resource browser as part of the main content. Is this going to be so it only shows the document tree when you need it?

Not sure. Good suggestion though. Might be too much movement to get rid of it, and moving it makes it harder to quickly go and edit documents when you’re done with non-tree action pages.

On the menu, where the separators used to be in the drop-down menus, you’ve got a "-". If you click on the "-" in the Components menu (which is empty) you get a dashboard-in-a-dashboard!

Update your SVN, run a build, run setup. That will fix that.

On the subject what’s likely to be in the Components menu? (This is also empty in my alpha-6 install.)

That’s where custom components can put their custom manager pages. I have a few custom components that use this.

The "Site Schedule" menu item in the "Reports" menu is showing as "site_schedule."

http://svn.modxcms.com/jira/

Finally, the 3 icons in the green panel, top-left, what are they going to be? At the minute they all take you back to the dashboard.

Yeah, that’s left to-do...the top one takes you dashboard, the middle previews, the bottom clears the cache.

The colour and theme of the new dashboard fits in great with the new logo and the look of your main website and forums! This truly is great work guys, well done - you’ve got me all thirsty for beta-1 now, can’t wait!!!

Thanks! The design for the manager backend was done by Marc Hinse (MadeMyDay). Credit him.

Quote from: splittingred at Dec 04, 2008, 02:00 PM

Another thing is the document tree - are you planning on keeping that showing on every screen? Like on some screens it’s irrelevant (e.g. adding a user), and when you take the "Resource Groups" screen, it’s actually duplicated because you’ve also got a resource browser as part of the main content. Is this going to be so it only shows the document tree when you need it?

Not sure. Good suggestion though. Might be too much movement to get rid of it, and moving it makes it harder to quickly go and edit documents when you’re done with non-tree action pages.

I wonder if it could have an icon or button to collapse and expand it horizontally. That way it would always be available after you’re done. It would be nice to have extra room for editing resources and elements. (Though I hate to think what that might cause in IE7).

I should mention that you can already drag the right edge of the tree to make it much narrower and expand the right panel.

Love where this is going, however a few minor usability issues, recorded here for reference:

1) I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make the doc-tree appear from the dashboard. Well I can now but it was a blocker for a few minutes with a small link amidst a lot of information. I think an action icon on the green "meta-navigator" would be good indeed. And an menu item under site too for that matter.

2) Top menu should probably change menu items on click, not hover ... it’s really "jumpy" to me.

3) The tree menu resizable control is nice, but inconsistent. I’d like to see the functionality restored to work like the pre-new-skin-effort where it also moves the content area.

I wonder if it could have an icon or button to collapse and expand it horizontally.

I should mention that you can already drag the right edge of the tree to make it much narrower and expand the right panel.

I was thinking about that, too. But the problem is that you also have to rebuild the Iframe on the right. Dont know how the performance would be when doing this in an animation... But I think we will find a suitable solution. Feedback like this is necessary for thinking about all possibilities.

1) I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make the doc-tree appear from the dashboard. Well I can now but it was a blocker for a few minutes with a small link amidst a lot of information. I think an action icon on the green "meta-navigator" would be good indeed. And an menu item under site too for that matter.

In the draft there is a "tree" icon, on the way in the branch this weekend (hopefully) ;-)

Also the dashboard is under construction, Shaun has implemented a template for that, so we can polish it and sort the important actions to top.

2) Top menu should probably change menu items on click, not hover ... it’s really "jumpy" to me.

I did some modifications already (not finished yet), but I think we will get this more robust. In my opinion it is better without click, but therefore the hover must not initiate at once. I think about a delayed transition and changing the submenu or something like that so hovers "by accident" will not immediately change the submenu.

But... we are just at the beginning ;-)

@hover
I could live with a delayed hover but also be able to trigger it instantly on click. See tabs at bottom of http://www.ibm.com/us/ (though for a primary navigation a longer delay would make more sense I think).

@content/tree resize
I’d vote for functionality (dragging works as expected with greatest utility) over form (fancy effects) any day. It works "properly" in the wireframe prototype (pre-skinning) and so it shouldn’t be a drag on performance.

I’d vote for functionality (dragging works as expected with greatest utility) over form (fancy effects) any day. It works "properly" in the wireframe prototype (pre-skinning) and so it shouldn’t be a drag on performance.

Sure! But why no have a button to quickly hide the tree (moving out of viewport on the left)...? But only if the Frame also can resize at the same moment.

See tabs at bottom of http://www.ibm.com/us/ (though for a primary navigation a longer delay would make more sense I think).

Exactly what I thought about...

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 05, 2008, 07:38 AM

@content/tree resize
I’d vote for functionality (dragging works as expected with greatest utility) over form (fancy effects) any day. It works "properly" in the wireframe prototype (pre-skinning) and so it shouldn’t be a drag on performance.

The problem is mainly with the rounding - that tree is built into a div inside the rounded corners, and Ext provides resizability, but only on that inner div. So when you resize it, it only resizes the Ext tree panel, and not the corners - making it look quite funky.

Also, resizing was a bit funky in IE.

I think the best option is hiding the tree, since that would be more consistently compatible cross-browser. It would also be easier to do with that iframe, I would think (and hope).

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 05, 2008, 07:38 AM

@hover
I could live with a delayed hover but also be able to trigger it instantly on click. See tabs at bottom of http://www.ibm.com/us/ (though for a primary navigation a longer delay would make more sense I think).

I second this, it looks quite swish on IBM’s site. I don’t see there being an issue with the delay either - IBM I think has the right delay - it’s just long enough not to be "jumpy" and just short enough so you don’t think nothing’s happening.

Quote from: rthrash

I’d vote for functionality (dragging works as expected with greatest utility) over form (fancy effects) any day.

Agreed!