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  • WEB SITE LOGIN

    My requirements include: “Until the user follows a login link, he should not
    see a login box, a password box, a registration link, or a lost password link.
    This decreases irrelevant clutter.”
    Is there a reason a simple link or weblink, to a page that contained the weblogin bits would not work? That’s a simple implementation decision, or am I not understanding the requirement?

    Further help me understand the previous/next links bits if you could. How many websites do you see that actually implement this, and why is this a requirement for evaluation? It would be trivial to author a snippet to parse through the menu indexes of the pages in your site and create those links. How do next/previous links work in sites with deep hierarchy? How would they work on a site like apple.com or adobe.com or any non-blog site for that matter?
      Ryan Thrash, MODX Co-Founder
      Follow me on Twitter at @rthrash or catch my occasional unofficial thoughts at thrash.me
      • 6016
      • 55 Posts
      Quote from: rthrash at Jan 23, 2008, 07:06 AM

      WEB SITE LOGIN

      My requirements include: “Until the user follows a login link, he should not
      see a login box, a password box, a registration link, or a lost password link.
      This decreases irrelevant clutter.”
      Is there a reason a simple link or weblink, to a page that contained the weblogin bits would not work? That’s a simple implementation decision, or am I not understanding the requirement?

      A single link entitled ’Sign in’, ’Log in’, etc., is all you need. You can see this in use at http://www.google.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/, and http://rahul.rahul.net/, among others. However, after logging in, the user should be able to easily return to the page from where he came, and various web sites succeed in facilitating this to various degrees. At http://en.wikipedia.org/, you just follow another link to return to the page. At http://rahul.rahul.net/, you need to use your back button a couple of times (not so good). At http://www.google.com/, most of the time, you end up where you wanted to be after you log in, but in some cases, you do not, depending on what you were trying to do. So implementations vary in their quality. Ideally, after you log in, you should find yourself back on the page from where you followed the login link.

      You can see it NOT in use at http://www.drupal.org/, http://scottydelicious.com/, and some of the MODx web sites, all of which repeatedly present a login box, a password box, a lost password link, and a registration link, to every user, on every screen, whether or not the user has any intention of ever logging in or registering.

      More later re your second question.

      Rahul
        • 6016
        • 55 Posts
        Quote from: rthrash

        Further help me understand the previous/next links bits if you could. How many websites do you see that actually implement this, and why is this a requirement for evaluation? It would be trivial to author a snippet to parse through the menu indexes of the pages in your site and create those links. How do next/previous links work in sites with deep hierarchy? How would they work on a site like apple.com or adobe.com or any non-blog site for that matter?

        General rule 1: Every web page should suggest some next web page for the viewer who is uncertain as to where to go next.

        Corollary: Every web page needs a reasonable Next link.

        General rule 2: Don’t make the user go in circles.

        Corollary: All the Next links should let the user visit each page exactly once before he eventually reaches his initial location.

        As to how many web sites do this--very few, primarily because they use CMSes or web design software that makes it hard to do. But remember, we are talking here not about web site design, but about CMS design. A CMS should provide facilities that will allow good web sites to be designed. If a web site could fruitfully provide a Next link on each page, the CMS should make this easy.

        So you will ask: In what order should the Next links point? Just look at the web site tree on the left-hand-side of the manager screen. The designer needs to order them in some manner that makes sense to him. That’s the order. Just do a preorder traversal of the tree.

        Here are example sites.

        Look for a link near the bottom of each page, and follow the links all the way to the end:

        http://www.avicraft.co.uk/
        http://www.lincombehouse.co.uk/

        This one has REL links:

        http://www.christchurchguildford.com/index.php?page=finances-and-giving

        Rahul


        • Seems to me that’s a design decision, and as has already been stated, would be very easy to implement with custom snippets.

          It’s not something I feel the need for; a good menu structure is my answer to that. I don’t see why most users would be at all interested in going from page to page, when a clear menu structure will let them go exactly where they want to go to begin with. Most users will go away if they don’t find what they want within a click or two, and paging through a site from one end to the other is not what most of my users are at all interested in doing.

          Besides, any serious site will have a prominently linked "site map" so a user can see the whole site at a glance and decide where he wants to go.

          On a personal note, this "sheep" idea, that your users need to be gently (or not so gently) herded along in the direction you deem appropriate is not what I think the Web is all about. But again, that’s my reason why I would never implement such a feature on my sites, and it is a personal design decision. I appreciate MODx giving me the flexibility to do as I choose in my design decisions.
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            • 6016
            • 55 Posts
            Quote from: ganeshXL

            [2] Management interface usability would be rated "excellent" for both CMSes if they provided protection against accidental erasure of the contents of a web page.

            I don’t get this part at all. Deleting a document in the MODx manager is a two-step procedure: You can still un-delete a page if you want to, and there’s warnings popping up if you want to delete stuff. If people then still "accidentally" erase content... guess it’s more of a user-error than a flaw with the application.

            Yes and no. Mostly, no. Here is another opinion about warnings and accidents:

            http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning

            But the real problem here isn’t so much deleting a page, which is rarely fatal in MODx, but overwriting its contents, which is always fatal. If you absent-mindedly hit ^A to select the entire page while editing it, then type a couple of words and then save, you are SOL.

            Rahul
              • 6726
              • 7,075 Posts
              Quote from: crossconnect at Jan 23, 2008, 09:11 AM
              But the real problem here isn’t so much deleting a page, which is rarely fatal in MODx, but overwriting its contents, which is always fatal. If you absent-mindedly hit ^A to select the entire page while editing it, then type a couple of words and then save, you are SOL.

              Sure... but the only solution to that is versionning (which will be avalaible in the future), and I am not aware of many CMS having this, does CMSMS now have it ?

              Interresting thread by the way, too bad I don’t have much time at the moment to jump in... I had written a quick comparison of txp vs cmsms vs modx vs EE a while, back and I am planning to upgrade it...
                .: COO - Commerce Guys - Community Driven Innovation :.


                MODx est l'outil id
                • 7231
                • 4,205 Posts
                MODx does have the REVERT option in the front end editing (quickedit) it is not a failsafe but allows you to view the changes and then revert if needed as long as you keep the edit window open. I would imagine that a true content versioning would lead to a bloated database.

                crossconnect: I don’t agree with those guidelines at all. I have never needed to include next/prev links in any site other than in multiple page articles. This would be a project specific requirement but not a global one and thus should not be in the core of MODx or any other general purpose CMS. I could see this in purpose specific tools like a dedicated blogging app, but with MODx you never know what will be built.
                  [font=Verdana]Shane Sponagle | [wiki] Snippet Call Anatomy | MODx Developer Blog | [nettuts] Working With a Content Management Framework: MODx

                  Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is.
                  Do you, Mr. Jones? - [bob dylan]
                  • 28033
                  • 925 Posts
                  Quote from: crossconnect at Jan 23, 2008, 07:36 AM

                  Quote from: rthrash at Jan 23, 2008, 07:06 AM

                  WEB SITE LOGIN

                  My requirements include: “Until the user follows a login link, he should not
                  see a login box, a password box, a registration link, or a lost password link.
                  This decreases irrelevant clutter.”
                  Is there a reason a simple link or weblink, to a page that contained the weblogin bits would not work? That’s a simple implementation decision, or am I not understanding the requirement?

                  A single link entitled ’Sign in’, ’Log in’, etc., is all you need. You can see this in use at http://www.google.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/, and http://rahul.rahul.net/, among others. However, after logging in, the user should be able to easily return to the page from where he came, and various web sites succeed in facilitating this to various degrees. At http://en.wikipedia.org/, you just follow another link to return to the page. At http://rahul.rahul.net/, you need to use your back button a couple of times (not so good). At http://www.google.com/, most of the time, you end up where you wanted to be after you log in, but in some cases, you do not, depending on what you were trying to do. So implementations vary in their quality. Ideally, after you log in, you should find yourself back on the page from where you followed the login link.

                  You can see it NOT in use at http://www.drupal.org/, http://scottydelicious.com/, and some of the MODx web sites, all of which repeatedly present a login box, a password box, a lost password link, and a registration link, to every user, on every screen, whether or not the user has any intention of ever logging in or registering.

                  More later re your second question.

                  Rahul


                  By your logic, mail.google.com should have a login link, which allows you to go to ANOTHER page that has a login box. You said before, the user shouldn’t have to go in circles --- what do you think clicking a link to go to another page where you have to click again to login does? laugh

                  And some webpages, like mine, don’t have a "go here next structure". Like on my website, I have the index + site-related pages, then the consoles, which have sections for the games for those consoles. I’m working on getting a sitemap up in the next few weeks (besides one already on the 404 page), but your "Web 2.0" idea doesn’t work for every website. Plus, doesn’t "herding" your visitors basically give them the impression that you think they are a bunch of mindless idiots who need someone to guide them every couple seconds, else they get all OMGWHEREDOIGOEZ?!? Those sites you mentioned are "flat" sites, meaning that they don’t have a complex hierarchy like my site does, for example. MODx isn’t Joomla!, where every site is a cookie-cutter image of the other. tongue

                  And IIRC, you have to click Save to get a page "overwritten". So if you can’t control your mouse enough to not click it, it’s your own damned fault. Plus, that’s why people should keep database backups handy. wink
                    My Snippets
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                    • 28215
                    • 4,149 Posts
                    I’ll reply with more later, but for now, one thing:

                    It looks to me like you’re not really out to provide an objective, measurable review. All of your comments and *tests* are highly subjective and peripheral in nature.

                    What are you writing for, eh?
                      shaun mccormick | bigcommerce mgr of software engineering, former modx co-architect | github | splittingred.com
                      • 3749
                      • 24,544 Posts
                      WEB SITE LOGIN
                      My requirements include: “Until the user follows a login link, he should not
                      see a login box, a password box, a registration link, or a lost password link.
                      This decreases irrelevant clutter.”

                      Rahul,

                      You’ve made some excellent and well reasoned points. I agree with a lot of them, but on this one, I’m afraid you just have it wrong. Take a look here: http://sd54dfl.org/.

                      It is the very first MODx site I built and, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see a simple link that takes you to the login page, just as you require. I did the site as a beginner to MODx and used the MODx components with very little trouble.

                      It is, in fact, the beauty of MODx that it allows maximum flexibility in web site design. It allows and provides support for, but does not require, previous and next links on every page, site maps, separate or ubiquitous login opportunities, and a host of other things.

                      BTW, it would be absurd, IMO, to have previous and next links on this site and an insult to the site visitor who would almost certainly like to make his or her own decisions about which page to view next.


                      Bob

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