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[BobRay]

Hi, I'm pretty excited about the revolution of MODx, but I'm not very into this coding stuff. However I would like to ask, if there are any screenshots of the 0.9.7 manager interface? This interests me, because I'm a web designer.  I'm not familiar with SVN very much, so I wish I could just glance at some simple JPG screenshots. Thank You.

P.S. I have few websites running on MODx, and thank god on MODx Great job! Looking forward to the official Revolutional release! Keep up the best work!

Bear in mind the the new Manager is highly customizable. Here are some quick shots of the current default look:

[lmestre]

I've just started to play with revo and, on the manager side, it is a very big departure from the previous user interface. Many things are greatly improved, better organized and customizable.
There is one thing though that just doesn't work for me : that is the accordion display on the left side. The redrawing is annoying, going from one accordion to the other involves useless flickering etc...
I thing the problem of having several panels on one spot has been already solved many times over: what work best is tabs (see Eclipse development tool panels on the left, Opera Browser panels on the left, Photoshop palettes on the right etc...).
Why not to have simply Resources, Elements, Files as tabs on the top of the left panel. No more flickering, better use of screen real-estate. Technically, I suppose it is probably a trivial change.

Anybody has any thoughts on that?

[splittingred]

I've just started to play with revo and, on the manager side, it is a very big departure from the previous user interface. Many things are greatly improved, better organized and customizable.
There is one thing though that just doesn't work for me : that is the accordion display on the left side. The redrawing is annoying, going from one accordion to the other involves useless flickering etc...
I thing the problem of having several panels on one spot has been already solved many times over: what work best is tabs (see Eclipse development tool panels on the left, Opera Browser panels on the left, Photoshop palettes on the right etc...).
Why not to have simply Resources, Elements, Files as tabs on the top of the left panel. No more flickering, better use of screen real-estate. Technically, I suppose it is probably a trivial change.

Anybody has any thoughts on that?

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.

Fitting tabs in the current layout would also take some redesign work - there's not really a place for it in the current design.

[doze]

I'd vote for tabs too..

EDIT: and just to add.. those accordions hasn't quite worked for me either.. for some reason the accordion panel is usually very tall (like 2000px) and goes out of the visible screen area even though there isn't any resources.. (FF 3.0.11) but I do have Firebug and Adblock etc, so it probably happens because of my browser setup..

In any case I'd like tabs better.

EDIT2: and if I can mention another thing that has bugged me is, that when the page is loading we get these "loading..." popups while various things are loading.. they take the focus away each time and I hate that. If I go to create a new document for example, I can click to the title field right away once it's shown and start editing it, but then the loading popups start popping on and they take the focus off every time.. I remember one occasion where I clicked the focus back to some field for 4 times after finally giving up and just waited until all popups were shown.. so.. Are those really necessary? Or could they be done so that they wouldn't take the focus?

[splittingred]

EDIT: and just to add.. those accordions hasn't quite worked for me either.. for some reason the accordion panel is usually very tall (like 2000px) and goes out of the visible screen area even though there isn't any resources.. (FF 3.0.11) but I do have Firebug and Adblock etc, so it probably happens because of my browser setup..

Probably firebug. I don't get this problem at all.

EDIT2: and if I can mention another thing that has bugged me is, that when the page is loading we get these "loading..." popups while various things are loading.. they take the focus away each time and I hate that. If I go to create a new document for example, I can click to the title field right away once it's shown and start editing it, but then the loading popups start popping on and they take the focus off every time.. I remember one occasion where I clicked the focus back to some field for 4 times after finally giving up and just waited until all popups were shown.. so.. Are those really necessary? Or could they be done so that they wouldn't take the focus?

I'll look into it. I've been wanting to move those into masks anyway.

[splittingred]

Loading box removed in most recent SVN.

[Sylvaticus]

Loading box removed in most recent SVN.

Superb! 

[therebechips]

Hi

I'm not so bothered about using tabs on the left if the accordion could be made 'static' between page redraws (so it doesn't appear to open on each page view but is already open with the panel that was last selected).

BUT, I would love to see tabs in the main editing area, so that Page settings is restored to a tab as in Evo. For two reasons:

* it's a step backward in usability to not be able to see the resource you're editing highlighted in the tree (since the document tree accordion panel is closed).

* I'd like to be able to build custom components and have various fields appear in separate tabs. Much like ManagerManager does with TVs in in Evo...

[doze]

I like everything to be configurable.. so:

I'm not so bothered about using tabs on the left if the accordion could be made 'static' between page redraws (so it doesn't appear to open on each page view but is already open with the panel that was last selected).

Yes, accordion should definitely remember which panel was open between page reloads and draw it as open on load.. and I also think that it should be possible to open multiple panels in the accordion at the same time.. but still, I'd like that there would be a system setting where you could enable tabs instead of that accordion.

BUT, I would love to see tabs in the main editing area, so that Page settings is restored to a tab as in Evo. For two reasons:

I guess this is going to be implemented based on this topic, but it's going to be configurable (yay!).. I prefer the panels.

* it's a step backward in usability to not be able to see the resource you're editing highlighted in the tree (since the document tree accordion panel is closed).

Yeah.. if multiple panels could be open at the same time in the accordion (e.g. if they would be implemented just as normal collapsible panels and not an accordion), it would remember what panels were open and then just add that page settings panel to the top being open by default (and possibly  in "non collapsible" mode).. But if tabs would be configured to be enabled instead of the "accordion" panels, the page settings panel would be created just as the same at the top and then the tabs panel below it containing the web resources, content elements and files in tabs.

* I'd like to be able to build custom components and have various fields appear in separate tabs. Much like ManagerManager does with TVs in in Evo...

Yes, this would be great and I guess it's planned to be implemented at some point.. or am I wrong..? But it wouldn't matter if your extra "tabs" would be created as separate tabs or separate panels, based on the system configuration.

[BobRay]

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.

[splittingred]

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).

[rfoster]

EDIT: Please leave feedback about the suggested changes to the right side of the Revo UI!

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.

[sottwell]

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.

[rthrash]

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

[lossendae]

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

[shamblett]

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.

[BobRay]

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).

[rfoster]

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

[splittingred]

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.

[rfoster]

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"!