The Joomla!^® User Experience Portal

Guys,
Here are a couple more concepts, mainly showing a few options for how parameter groups could be styled across an entire column.

This 1st concept A is basically setup like the other mockups, but you have 3 and 2 columns of options per group.

The 2nd concept B is a full column, more detailed approach. My inspiration for these layout came from how RocketTheme has their Gantry Template parameters setup. In this concept you have multiple parameters 'per row' so you can group items together.

Although the A concept is smaller and compact, the B concept I personally like better because it's bigger makes more sense to me to group related parameter items (ie icons, print & email icons) into 1 row.

Thoughts?

ReeBooT wrote:


Public, Registered and Special are access levels and somewhat separate of the the remainder of the ACL. Since Joomla 1.6 you can add as many access levels as you want.

Hi ReBoot,

First, great work on everything - very clean and it looks nice. However, I can't shake the sense that this is closely following WordPress over all, which is why I feel it looks so nice; but IMHO, I don't believe to be the best direction to take.

One of the biggest things right now between the major open source systems is differentiation, and this is what I think Joomla! is striving to do with 3.0.

The problem with a WP-like UI is that it is, well, very much like WP. So if the idea is differentiation and showing how Joomla! is different, and more importantly - better, then I don't think it's wise to follow a very similar experience, administratively, to WordPress.

I think creating a new interface, a better UX (even than WP) is possible, and is what is needed. And if we fall into the "WP is so beautiful and so we should strive to be like them" mantra, then we will truly place the project in a "followers" role, as compare to a roll that sets the standard (which has been our situation for that last 2-3 years now).

Again, great mock up - because it really is, and I really do like it a lot; it's just that I don't personally think this is the direction the project should be taking with its UX.


Cheers

Kyle

@Ryan,
Great work on you mockups, glad to have a comrade working on concepts in all this

Some quick feedback:
Things that are working:
- Overall style and whitespace
- Tabs for settings
- Large article editing/creation

Thinks that could be a concern:
- Icons taking over the world! I love the Bootstrap icons too, but we really need to use them in moderation. Even with tooltips/popovers we don't want users to have to hover to figure everything out.
- Toggles are great, but sometimes a simple select box is easier on a user
- Too much info on one page, let's tuck as much away into tabs as possible to not overwhelm users as Joomla does today.
- Tabs only, the right sidebar of Collapsing sliders is a space hog, especially since we're all agreeing on a left sidebar for main or subnav

I agree w/ some of @ kmfabercreative's comments. WordPress has gotten by on a left nav for a long time as a simple CMS, but now that they're expanding, even they added a top adminbar.
I really like the Google Apps approach (you've seen from my mockups in this thread) since Joomla has a similar paradigm - your main "Apps" can link from the top nav and reserve the left nav for the submenu and accompanying modules. Things like Shops (Tienda, Virtuemart) need tons of left nav space for their submenu.

Again, love the momentum building up. Last note: Bootstrap is fantastic for real HTML/CSS/JavaScript prototyping, it really helps flush out the interaction and layout decisions. I recommend that over working in Fireworks/Photoshop

I don't now if my wish should be posted here. But for Joomla 3.0 I really want more functionality in the menu manager. Be able to sort and rearrange menus. Like you can do in article manager.

If the menus are rearranged in the menu manager, it should also be rearranged in the menu of the admin.

If you have a big site with a lot of menus, it is hopeless after a while when you cannot sort the menus.

Maybe it also should be possible to sort them in groups. Like categories and sub categories. But only in the menu and the menu manager.

I have a site with almost 100 menus. It is hopeless to navigate around on the site.

100 menus, yikes! I think this speaks to some deeper-routed com_menus and Itemid issues, but:

In the J3UX demo you'll find a totally new concept called Pages that's trying to do much of what you're asking for www.kyleledbetter.com/j3ux/admin/examples/pages/ < that particular demo will change a bit, but we're trying to find something to allow for super easy "page" (menu item) creation, and super easy management of those

Hey, Kyle. I try your demo. And really, from one way it's cool to have everything on click, not hover. That give us impression more solid template/usability.

But more problem for me it's all based on JavaScript and without JS nothing work. Bootstrap is great, but when you build everything on it there will be no other easy door for alternative, right? Developers follow new standards and everything will be worked like this.

My BIG REQUEST is to change the method that it works. Create buttons, dropdowns, lists, menu in PURE CSS & HTML with hovering everything by default and then, DISABLE hovering by JavaScript - left just on click. So effect will be the same for you! But the way it works will be simpler, and working even without javascript with hover. So with this way, you left door for me & others to use everything just css with hover if we want and where we want. Because for me in some cases on click will be better, in some other not. Give me opportunity to choose how I want it do in own template without hard-coding.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. Can you do it for me? You set standards and default ways. I don't want to create html override for every component like we do it today.

Hi guys,

Very much appreciate what you guys are doing here for Joomla 3.0. During past months, we have been also working on revamping Joomla administration UX and came up with an extension JSN PowerAdmin.
This is not a commercial product, it’s just our vision about how Joomla administration should be. Please take a look at video tour and download to try.

www.joomlashine.com/joomla-extensions/jsn-poweradmin.html

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.