Re: developer.plone.org deeplink redirects?

Dylan Jay <djay-n0pU0XVUApFWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> Thu, 8 May 2014 11:25:04 +1000
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.web.zope.plone.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 7 May 2014, at 10:16 pm, Héctor Velarde <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 06-05-2014 01:52, Dylan Jay wrote:
>>> we are dedicating too much time and resources on "fixing" things that clearly are not broken, like Ease of Content Editing, on which we rock.
>>> 
>>> we need to focus on the real problems we have: your work clearly is on the right path.
>> 
>> Which efforts of fixing ease of content editing are you referring to?
>> 
>> You are basing that on a just one documents opinion? I know they try to do look in depth at each CMS but I suspect they have been a little to kind to Plone. Comments like "Site articles can be placed in one or multiple categories. The platform automatically displays the articles in the appropriate sections based on those categories." aren't accurate.
> 
> HV> sorry for the off-topic comment, but such is life...
> 
> first, a disclaimer: I'm neither a designer, nor a UI/UX expert; all my experience in this field is empirical and comes from 3 or 4 books, dozens of articles and over 20 years using the web.
> 
> so, I'm not basing my opinions on one document; I see my opinions confirmed on that document.
> 
> trying to discredit a big effort like Idealware's guide just by saying that you "suspect" something or that you think that a comment is not accurate, is not constructive and that's part of the problem: we better not ignore other people opinions, but try to understand them.

I didn't say that I think the comment might be inaccurate. I'm saying that is one comment of many in that report which is clearly untrue with regard to Plone. I'm not sure such a broad study is useful in guiding our UI efforts since a) it is inaccurate at least with regard to plone b) it covers so many CMS's that I don't think they can cover Plone in enough depth to be useful.

> 
> do you have other studies or guides saying something different? just share them so we can make a review.

The survey I conducted which includes votes from people who regularly uses Plone clearly shows Plone has areas of improvement in UX

https://trello.com/b/h8J1evdp/the-plone-ux-hit-list-beta

It you have other ideas on what surveys the Plone UI team could do to analyse the Plone's UI performance then please let the team know.

but I don't think you even need to look at surveys. Look how many people blog on planet plone from wordpress or medium rather than Plone. Do you do training of users regularly who have never used a CMS before? or even worse, those used to newer CMS's like ... actually won't mention names. We don't live in a world where we compete with old versions of joomla or drupal anymore. Until every single community member who cares about the Plone prefers to use Plone to put content online because it's the easiest way to do so... then we don't rock.

I was at an event last night with several people in the wordpress community including someone from automattic. I asked them what they attributed the popularity of WP to be. They said because it runs almost anywhere and its "easy to use". I would summarise what they said as saying - easy to host, easy to theme, easy to use. Plone can do better in every single category. 

> 
> it's not a secret that I dislike a lot the vertical toolbar; but, of course, this is only my opinion... some other people share it, but I just make the point clearer.

This is the first time I've heard your dislike. The vertical toolbar was discussed on both UI list and the mockup project and I didn't notice any comments from you. Given the UI team is there to help guide UI effort, don't you think thats a good place to voice your dislike?

http://plone.293351.n2.nabble.com/SPRINT-URGENT-Toolbar-design-td7570086.html
https://github.com/plone/mockup/issues/136


> 
> I don't know why we ended with a vertical toolbar on the first place and I don't understand why we think we must put content edition over mobile devices as a priority when obviously tablets and smartphones are most likely to be used by content consumers and not by content creators.

why do you think mobile devices are being given a lower priority? One of the reason of the vertical toolbar was because it was better for mobile. The main reason however was because the side menu was less likely to interfere with random themes since themes like bootstrap will use an absolute positioned top menu bar.
What is your actual complaint about the vertical toolbar?
My issues with it (which are fixable) are:
- needs an optional 2nd mode with words as well as icons
- needs an optional 3rd mode where it is completely hidden
- I'd prefer vertical accordion menus rather than side pop-out menus as currently it requires too much zig zag mouse movements. see #9 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/09/27/10-usability-nightmares-you-should-be-aware-of/
- needs more elements on it like last updated, history etc so the main screen is untouched by Plone editing UI.

> 
> we rock in many ways and suck in many others. we must try better on what we suck. we suck at documentation, not at content editing.

we might not suck as much as some others but we aren't by any stretch world leaders in CMS editing UI. We can do much better and unnecessary stop energy doesn't help.
IMO we haven't gone nearly far enough with the UI changes. Most of the plone5 changes are surface only. The current toolbar works more or less the same as the current green bar. Default pages are still a problem for example. The biggest enhancement is the new folder-contents because it actually allows us to do more bulk operations than we could do before. We need to think of changes that let our users do more and more quickly, rather than just changing the widgets and L&F.

> yes, we can enhance content editing in many ways but, IMO, we are taking unnecessary risks on this. the toolbar should be made available for production on Plone 4.x before releasing Plone 5 so it can be tested in the real world and fixed, if needed.

It has been previously released to be used in 4.3 and some have used it. I believe they are preparing for another release. Please do install it and give us feedback. Take the current demo site and observe users you know using it. That is a 100 times more valuable than either your or my opinions. I would be in favour of delaying plone5 until such testing is done. I wouldn't be in favour of releasing plone 5 without significant UI enhancements.

> 
> I would like to spend more time discussing with you using more arguments and less opinions; unfortunately, I haven't the time for this right now as I'm in the middle of a big project.
> 
> maybe soon in person and with a couple of Belgian beers in front.

Unfortunately I think too much is discussed at sprints and in front of beers and doesn't end up on the list. This has a consequence where decisions are made with even less chance for those on the outskirts of the community to give their opinion... including those that do have to actually edit content in plone rather than code on it. The Plone community is too core developer focused but I can't see what we can do about that unfortunately. but saying we don't have a problem with editing UI doesn't help.

> 
> best regards
> 
> Héctor Velarde
>

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