Quote from: erikp at Aug 19, 2009, 04:40 AM
A programmer’s view - or: a steepened learning curve
When I’m browsing through the manager, I am overwhelmed by all the technical terms I encounter. Namespaces, connectors, content elements, controllers, actions, etc. Now I’m ok with this because I know what it means from my technical background. However I think the manager should be written from the users’ point of view, not from the programmers.
The people that most often use the manager here are our copywriters, who have limited technical knowledge. They want to see a list of "pages", not "web resources". They don’t want to click "template variables" to see the rest of the content because to them content equals content. The page-tree is the center of all activity, so why is it not always visible anymore? ’static resource’? You mean a file?
Even for me as a programmer some things are really not intuitive. Where do I put my template files, css and js? Do I first have to create a namespace and a directory or something? The point is that things everyone does a lot, should be extremely obvious.
I have spent a lot of time just thinking about this exact thing Erik.
1. I agree novice users (aka editors) could see that techno lingo and just be overwhelmed
2. But the manager must have all of these things for the system admin/power user to setup revo the way they want.
I see 2 options, and I think both will be used in revo
1. The same as evo: using permissions/roles to hide power-user items from novices
2. I think this is where revo will shine: creating a custom ’admin’ context where novices can have a seperate application that is just used for editing/adding text. This could be done in 2 ways (tell me if im wrong anyone)
- a) The manager is a thing of MVC beauty, so a custom template could be designed for novices/editors when they login
- b) a new context is made that is for basic content adding/editing. This would allow sys-admins/power-users to manage and setup their system. And allow novices a super simple way to just manage their content. (a context similar to Ekklesia360 comes to mind).
Explanation of (b). Let’s say to have 6 content pages, a blog, a gallery and 2 forms. You could create seperate links ’Pages’, ’Blog items’, ’Galleries’, and ’Forms’.
When the novice wants to add/edit a page, the click on the ’page link’, and see the form with whatever TVs you want to show. You can have the template automatically set.
The same for blog, gallery, and forms.
For the gallery, you could just show swfupload to upload some pics for each ’resource’.
I really feel this is where good revo systems are going to go (and where roles + managermanager has taken evo). I just feel revo will let the community take this to another level from one of these ways (manager templates or contexts).
Am I wrong here Jay, or is this really possible?
MODX Staff
