Tabs or Panels?

The development team for MODx Revolution is reviewing the manager UI, and some discussion has come up regarding the two modes of UI organizing for the main panels on the right. (Not the accordion trees.)

So, which would you prefer? The panels as they are currently in beta-1 and SVN; or tabs more like 0.9.6/Evo?

A good example is the Resource Update page. Currently each pane (Page Settings/Access/etc) is in collapsible panels which are organized vertically. In 096/Evo there are tabs for each section. Which proves better, and more efficient? Which is more accessible to you?

We’d like your feedback. Thanks!

Panels: (Current)


Tabs:

Can we have both, and just change it as a configuration option?

Definitely tabs for my part. It’s so much easier for the eye. Not so much movement and flicker. And easier accesible to.

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.

Quote from: rfoster at Jun 25, 2009, 02:22 PM

Can we have both, and just change it as a configuration option?

Hm. Yes. I guess this poll just became "Which should be default?"

Yes definitely make this a configurable setting, not a forced to either one of them.. But I voted Panels for default setting

Tabs as default please, thanks.

Btw, about the accordion tree, there’s now way that can be made draggable? If I had that choice, I would drag it over to the right. It’s just the way I work; I tend to like things that I click on often to be on the right...no biggie though.

cheers/k

Tabs, definitely. To access the panels, I have to scroll down *and* open them. A tab is a single click. In addition, tabs are more familiar to Evo users.

As for the configurable options, I’m all for flexibility, but as someone who’s writing a book on MODx, It sure is nice to be able to tell users exactly what to do and produce screen shots that will match what the user sees on the screen.

Personal preference aside, I think that easily changeable options that cause significant changes in the look of the Manager will hurt MODx in the long run. Complete, clear, and accurate docs are much more important than minor look-and-feel issues, IMHO. Almost no one will adopt MODx because the Manager is configurable, but many potential users will be driven away by docs that either don’t match what they see on the screen or say, "if you have the Manager configured for tabs, do this, if configured for panels, do this."

Just my $.02.

Quote from: BobRay at Jun 25, 2009, 05:16 PM

"if you have the Manager configured for tabs, do this, if configured for panels, do this."

I don’t think that it would matter very much in this case from documentation point of view.. the content in both is the same. In other option the content is just rendered in separate tabs and in the other in separate panels..

But the documentation should be done in any case with the default look of the manager.. these settings are just for "experienced" users that probably don’t have to look every thing from a screen shot. I for example like the panels because they are draggable and I’d like that those layout settings would eventually save to db so that I could layout all the various views like I want. And for me, I would take that feature over any documentation. But I also understand the users who like to have good docs and screen shots on how to go about in the manager, but like said, these docs should be done with the default manager layout.

And for reference, Revolution and it’s concepts have been compared to Eclipse many times.. Eclipse also allows users to customize the layouts of the UI (a lot more than what Revolution does currently) and they have still managed to provide documentation for it.

I wouldn’t limit the manager functionality based on the point that it would be more work to document. But that’s just my opinion.. what ever the head honchos decide, that’s ok for me.

I like tabs...but since I have not used Revo much I can’t tell you that they are better then panels.