Flux CMS DevBlog

Since a long time we were thinking about how to improve the admin experience... Now the first step has been committed. A so called "overview" page for each collection, resource and the start page. It's not so easy to explain, so see for yourself at http://trunkdemo.bitflux.org/admin/ and login
with demo/demo (If miss-used, I'll shut it down :) ). Click also on some collections and resources on the navi-tree, to see how it's actually supposed to work. Currently it's mainly the context menu remapped to the edit frame, but with much more space for additions.

As the next step will be to redesign (graphically) the whole thing, I'm not interested in hearing what you think about the design (it will change and will be less green ;) ), but I'm really really interested in hearing if you like this approach or if you see further improvements. Or if you would do it completely different.

We also plan to add a Bookmark feature and a LiveSearch option to the top.frame for easy and fast access to the content.

If you'd like you can also check out the new dbforms2 implementation. Choose in the Blog section "Edit Categories/Links" and then something there. Currently only works in Firefox/Mozilla, but IE support is very near (just 2-3 little things are missing).

As we think this addition to the admin is very important (You actually see on first sight after login what you can do and not only after clicking around...), we try to push 1.3 a little bit and try to make a release pretty soon. Even though some other features are not really finished (the metadata search for example). Freeflux.net will then
also be upgraded.

And now, please comment :)

Update: The admin will definitively not look like in the trunkdemo mentioned above. It will be much lighter and more appealing. It's just a proof of concept for the general UI behaviour.

Alain @ 29.06.2005 11:41 CEST
Hi Chregu, i have not had the time to look into it very close, but i think it is a good start. although it looks a bit overloaded, it is great to handle the configs in a consistent way.

i will give you futher feedback as soon as the semester is over ;)

Alain @ 29.06.2005 23:44 CEST
I checked it out of svn. It seems to work without troubles :)

The entrance-tree is cool (It is a tree here, css somehow got lost, propably must move something :) - anyways, trunkdemo version looks good. thehiding/unhiding is nice).

Edit Categories could be done more intuitive. The edit-comments link/page does not really fit here...

So far, thanks for the update :)

Alain @ 30.06.2005 09:29 CEST
The thing with the css only happened on www.sequenz.ch, update on zhw.sequenz.ch took along css... :)

chregu @ 30.06.2005 10:10 CEST
Alain: Thanks a lot for your feedback. As said, the design will certainly change. I agree it looks a little bit stuff right now and I hope we get that lighter-looking. Also a desicion what topic is under which tab is not yet made. It was "just" a general prototype of how it could look like and behave.

Also the dbforms2 screen and all the other editors should then have the same look'n'feel. Currently it's quite a mess :)

chregu

adrian @ 08.07.2005 11:39 CEST
i'm not shure, if this is about what you wanted to know... but could you include the "site-name" in the page-title of the bxcms-admin?
if you have to work on more than one bxcms-installation at the same time you just see "BXCMS Admin" in every tab ... not really helpful... ;-)

chregu @ 08.07.2005 11:45 CEST
adrian: Yep, we'll do that. thanks for the hint.

One other hint to work around that, is to use different favicons, they usually show up in the tab of at least firefox .

Alain @ 08.07.2005 12:20 CEST
The admin-interface has really become much better. Here is what i thought could be better.

For blogging-purposes it would be nice if i had maybe the last 2-5 entries diectly after login. maybe in a sidebox to the right or something.

Absolutely great would be of course if one could it's login view and default action per content-type. For example it could be a klick less, if default acion for image would be the nice editor with some options to the site (like move, delete).

The "edit in image" is great. it should be the default action on an image. if then this view would have some boxes for inputs like name, description and tags. The "edit in files"-dialog could be en a second box with some nice icons ;)

The gallery-default-view would really be pimped if one could preview mini pics of the current gallery.

Is it possible to create language files for the admin-interface? One could then easily take care of translation.

It's a great tool.

Thanks,
Alain.

Alain @ 08.07.2005 12:25 CEST
Oh and yes, just like in ecto, it would be great if one could see and mark already used tags when inserting/editing a blog entry. So far, now... ;)

chreu @ 08.07.2005 12:35 CEST
adrian: It shows now the sitename in the title bar in the admin...

alain: Thanks for your suggestions, I'll come back to them. They're really helpful.

Alain @ 08.07.2005 14:37 CEST
This sentence is a bit weird, i missed a word there: "Absolutely great would be of course if one could it's login view and default action per content-type."

It should be:"
"Absolutely great would be of course if one could *personalize* it's login view and *also set* a default action per content-type."

Must have had a phonecall there ;)

chregu @ 08.07.2005 18:49 CEST
And now my comments:

>The admin-interface has really become much better. Here is what i
>thought could be better.

Thanks a lot for your feedback. It's very valuable to us.
What you see today, will certainly not be the look, when we actually updated it .) monorom is currently working on some design templates and they look really cool. Although will take some time, until we can commit them


>For blogging-purposes it would be nice if i had maybe the last 2-5
>entries diectly after login. maybe in a sidebox to the right or
>something.

Yes, I thought about that as well. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

>Absolutely great would be of course if one could it's login view and
>default action per content-type. For example it could be a klick less,
>if default acion for image would be the nice editor with some options to
>the site (like move, delete).

Nice idea, not implemented in a few minutes :) What we'll do is a bookmarks manager on the top right, where you can bookmark your most used actions. That's hopefully gonna be in 1.3

>The "edit in image" is great. it should be the default action on an
>image. if then this view would have some boxes for inputs like name,
>description and tags. The "edit in files"-dialog could be en a second
>box with some nice icons ;)

I think, we stay on the default action == overview of what all can be done. But it needs to have a shortcut somewhere to get quickly to "edit in image" I agree with you. The copy/move (and other options) stuff directly available on the "image editor" is also something we will certainly think about. The problem is, that those views are all quite independent right now, so it's not that easy to mere them together

>The gallery-default-view would really be pimped if one could preview
>mini pics of the current gallery.

yep, cool idea.

>Is it possible to create language files for the admin-interface? One
>could then easily take care of translation.

Not yet. It's in the TODO list somewhere and is badly needed :)

>Oh and yes, just like in ecto, it would be great if one could see and
>mark already used tags when inserting/editing a blog entry. So far, now... ;)

I think the blog editor needs a facelifting anyway. A tag chooser should be possible to do. I like the idea (but i'm using only ecto most of the time anyway).

And now something about the timeframe. My plan is to release 1.3 as soon as we have the new look&feel integrated. I think to appeal more people, this is urgently needed. This also means, that almost certainly no new major features will go into 1.3 (we are currently anyway working on client projects and have not much time to work on big new features). I also don't think that we can rewrite a lot of the admin code to integrate some of your proposals (and our further ideas) for the 1.3 release. This will be done for the 1.4 release. In short, 1.3 will behave almost like it does today, just a new look (with maybe little adjustements). 1.4 should then have some improvements in the general UI, not only in the design. Release early, release often.

Uuuh, that was long :)

Alain @ 14.07.2005 12:09 CEST
Hi, thanks for your reply! Very promising ;)

I thought of something else... I placed it also into the wishlist on the wiki:
Automatic-Renaming of Images. I always upload images with strange-names, e.g. picture000(0...n).jpg - one could then rename them all in a folder maybe to klassentreffen-(0-n).jpg.

the same with resizing. all those 4+-megapixel-cameras generate huge pictures which do not make much sense on a website. If one could resize the original on a server (just like in edit-in-image) but just on a whole folder...

Well, just another thought ;)

adrian @ 28.07.2005 18:15 CEST
I've thought again about the actual flux-cms-admin...
...if it shouldn't look "too techie", i think, it would be better to find an other solution than to put "...de.xhtml" in the file-names of the navi-tree.
- does a "normal" user understand those suffixes?
- could there be found a better solution than the navi-tree (if you plan to realize a *big* site with flux-cms, it isn't too easy to hold the overview...)?

(just some inputs and thougts...)

chregu @ 28.07.2005 18:19 CEST
.de.xhtml: After the first use, he should know it, what that means :) But yes, maybe there's something better for that

Big Sites: we plan to integrate something like livesearch on the top, so you can easily search for any entry. That's as an addition to the navi tree. The navitree won't go away :) No idea, when we will have that, almost certainly not for 1.3, maybe 1.4

adrian @ 29.07.2005 08:21 CEST
And another wish/idea:
- Could it be possible to log some data for every (static) site (who did create it? when? who did change it? when?)
(And for this data it would maybe be necessary to get another overview...)
[know what i mean? it's not that easy to explain this in word...]

chregu @ 29.07.2005 08:23 CEST
Adrian: We're working on versioning support in Flux CMS. The basics are already there, but once we have that, you will have all this information

(It currently needs ext/svn, but it's modular, so we would write something which doesn't depend on non-standard extensions)

adrian @ 29.07.2005 11:18 CEST
grrrreat! :-) i just have to get running the new svn (with ssl etc.) on my tiger an then i can update my flux-installations easier.. ;)

with the new version (the new infos etc), would it be possible to allow the different users to have access to particular languages or collections?

maybe there could also be a filter-option implemented in a new overview (i still think of an overview beside the existing and expanded navitree in the main-frame), so that just one language is shown in the overview eg.?

chregu @ 29.07.2005 11:27 CEST
Real Permission management (who is allowed to see and edit what) is on the TODO list.

Filter? Maybe that gets too complicated, but we can certainly think about it.

And if you want a different overview, you have to come up with some solutions (not code. just solutions). I have no idea, how that should look like or how this should work...

adrian @ 29.07.2005 11:46 CEST
"not code" ... sound good ;-)
i will contact you by e-mail as soon as i find the time, ok? i think it's too difficult to explain this just with words... i maybe could send you some attachements, who knows...

chregu @ 29.07.2005 11:47 CEST
Just use the mailinglist, it's anyway the better place for discussions than this blog entry :)

adrian @ 29.07.2005 11:56 CEST
can i send attachements via the mailing-list? (just in case...)

chregu @ 29.07.2005 11:59 CEST
yes you can, they maybe moderated when their too big, so we have to approve them, but in principle, they go through. If you have screenshots or whatever it's maybe also a solution to put them online somewhere (if they get too big)