The Joomla!^® User Experience Portal

Oh, yeah - I do that on a regular basis!

There is an argument to say that replicating shortcuts for windows/macs etc for anything that resembles a document makes a lot of sense.

For a system to be of use to people, the learning curve should be minimal - so sticking as close to the familiar as possible makes sense.

Autosave gets dangerous without some sort of revision history / restore functionality. You can see the potential problems pretty easily.

I agree that there are too many options. Save, Save & Close, Save & New, Save as Copy? Way too many. However, I can also see a need for those, as I do use them (except for save as copy) almost every day. When I'm creating multiple menu items, Save & New is great. When I'm editing and reviewing the changes, a Save will suffice. When I don't want to review, I just edit then Save & Close.

When you save a Word doc, it doesn't close out, it saves the current state because you are happy with where it is at - and you can continue editing. Also, there isn't a Save & Close in Word, but if you made changes it does ask you if you want to save BEFORE you close it. If you select yes, then it saves and closes if for you.

Maybe implementing something along those lines would be good. Just Save as one button and Close as another. If the dom detects a change in any area and you click close, it prompts you to save before closing. A client actually requested that I implement this for her recently, and it works pretty well. There isn't the auto-detection and logic to make sure there is something that needs saved, but the base idea is there. Maybe I should fork and pull request?

Don, I agree, following the word/windows example would make a lot of sense - especially for users who spend most of their time working on desktop applications - making them as similar as possible would be good.

In a way, there is an argument that the way an interface works for creating and editing a record is different from the functions that an administrator uses for creating menus, installing bits and pieces and so on.

And even with content there is a difference between adding a simple one line record to a list and writing and saving an article.

And, just to confuse it more, the nomenclature of the buttons might need to change depending on how this particular version of Joomla is being used.

For instance, if it is a one-person website, where the "Admin" is also the content submitter and editor, having a simple word style save, save as, open, close would make a lot of sense. Publish would possibly be "on" as default (though this should have a global setting) and save would also publish.

However, if this is being used as a News website where there is a separation between Authors and Editors* then the Authors probably want Save (for just saving for their reference) and Send to Editors when they are ready for the editors to publish it.

There are probably a lot of other variations too - especially if you add CCK style abilities where your record types may be very varied in style and use.

So, perhaps we could add the ability to change the names of the function buttons either globally (for a default installation) or on a component by component basis (or any other basis) That way, the admin can choose the button naming system that his clients or colleagues are most familiar with.

Joss

(* An old bug-bear of mine is the existence of a user group called "publisher" in Joomla. I am not sure how this got into Mambo/Joomla in the early days, but a publisher in the real world is the person who owns the publication, not who presses the print/publish button - that is the Editor. One of the Joys of ACL has been the ability to evict the publisher from the system! )

Hi guys. Fantastic suggestions on the topics.
I would like to chip in on something.

Regarding the Save&Close , Save as Copy etc, - these are considered 'advanced' options and are not really necessary out of the box.
I suggest that the basic options like SAVE be the default.
All users will see it.

Allow for a dropdown checkbox on the right of the button toolbar that let users who want to see the advanced buttons to check boxes for the extra buttons.
Maybe call it 'MORE'.

-MORE
-( )Save & Close
-( )Save & Copy
-(x)Save a Copy

Something like this?

I hope I am clear enough...

Sorry, this is a little off subject, but Mr9sky has just made me think of something.

It would be interesting to have some sort of ajax based system where you could switch the UI into "Development" mode.

In this mode you can click on any element in the UI and change the properties for it - hide, show, show for specific group and so on. You would also be able to change the label of buttons and links to what ever suits your client; the result would be saved to the language file for whatever language you are currently using. Maybe even change background colours of boxes ....

Just a thought.


Hoss

Hi there, I'm new here, been using joomla for some time and thought about trying to help u guys a little

I would not be to happy to see the apply button disappear. I kinda love that button because its easier to apply and check on the site if the result is as desired than to save, check and lookup the article again.

I might have a solution to the auto save functionality, we use Sisyphus.js on some of our websites to temp. catch user input. There is a article about that here. This option won't have all the problems previously mentioned. Atleast if I'm not mistaken.

Personaly I would recommend to eliminate the save&new button and the help button, it might be an option to put the help button in the status bar. I would recommend only keeping apply, save and cancel because those are the main functions needed and lose all the extra functionality thats not needed.

Hmm maybe not removng the buttons totally. I am all for better functionality.
Keep the buttons as options as mentioned before.

For the Help button, maybe change it to a "?" so that it takes less screen space and also less intrusive.

I little off topic here but.. anyone knows how I got a negative Karma?
What did I do wrong?