I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2. I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time. However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work. I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse. I do a lot of TTW development, and I think I might find that cumbersome, so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-) I also much prefer blue to black as a background colour for the tabs and the "Root Folder" link. The black seems a bit overbearing. -- Steve Alexander Software Engineer Cat-Box limited http://www.cat-box.net
Steve Alexander wrote:
I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2.
I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time.
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
I also much prefer blue to black as a background colour for the tabs and the "Root Folder" link. The black seems a bit overbearing.
Hmm. I haven't checked out the new interface myself yet, but I wonder if DC did any usability testing on their new UI? Cheers, Michael Bernstein.
Steve Alexander wrote:
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left.
I haven't seen this yet, but I have to agree. Two frames is bad enough btu addign another one with all the wasted border space, etc, sounds like a bad idea...
This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
...which is always a good thing
I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse.
Yeah, and that's going to get even more annoying than constantly having to widen the edit box every time you access the same Zope instance through a different domain name :-(
so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-)
Can you post a patch if you do? ;-)
I also much prefer blue to black as a background colour for the tabs and the "Root Folder" link. The black seems a bit overbearing.
...I'd agree too... cheers, Chris
I haven't seen this yet, but I have to agree. Two frames is bad enough btu addign another one with all the wasted border space, etc, sounds like a bad idea...
This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
Hear, hear, could anyone post some screenshots? -- Andy McKay
I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2.
I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time.
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse. I do a lot of TTW development, and I think I might find that cumbersome, so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-)
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^) Seriously - Zope has been criticized for a very long time for being, ah, aesthetically challenged :) It is a valid criticism - we have been (and quite honestly, will continue to be) more concerned with function over form. But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding? I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the community for reviews to come out that waste words on the visual appeal shortcomings of the UI and totally miss the point. A better first impression is a Good Thing. The top frame is also a place where we might want to put more "placeless" operations like logout in the future. You can only jam so much into the tree pane without it looking very much like way too much is being jammed into the tree pane :) FWIW, one of the things we may put there later is a way to do "browser preferences" via cookies to control things like default text area sizes. That could also have a "hide top frame" option for those who really can't spare the 32px. :^) Brian Lloyd brian@digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations www.digicool.com
Well just to be completely different to everyone else, I like the new look. The bar at the top takes up a centimeter on my 20in monitor and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I think Brain is right, People have been asking for DC to give Zope a face lift and now its got one you are all complaining about it. Don't get me wrong the points you raised are valid but you are complaining about 32 pixels. Give it a week and you won't know what you were complaining about. Overall it gets the thumbs up from me. :) -Andy (P.S. Why hasn't the acl_users folder got the same style of shaded/non-shaded rows, Just a consistancy thang :)
-----Original Message----- From: zope-dev-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-dev-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: 12 January 2001 02:12 To: Steve Alexander; zope-dev@zope.org Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] New UI for 2.3
I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2.
I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time.
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse. I do a lot of TTW development, and I think I might find that cumbersome, so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-)
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
Seriously - Zope has been criticized for a very long time for being, ah, aesthetically challenged :) It is a valid criticism - we have been (and quite honestly, will continue to be) more concerned with function over form. But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding?
I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the community for reviews to come out that waste words on the visual appeal shortcomings of the UI and totally miss the point. A better first impression is a Good Thing.
The top frame is also a place where we might want to put more "placeless" operations like logout in the future. You can only jam so much into the tree pane without it looking very much like way too much is being jammed into the tree pane :) FWIW, one of the things we may put there later is a way to do "browser preferences" via cookies to control things like default text area sizes. That could also have a "hide top frame" option for those who really can't spare the 32px. :^)
Brian Lloyd brian@digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations www.digicool.com
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Come on, can someone post some sample screenshots? -- Andy McKay. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Dawkins" <andyd@nipltd.com> To: "Brian Lloyd" <brian@digicool.com>; <zope-dev@zope.org> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 12:39 AM Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] New UI for 2.3
Well just to be completely different to everyone else, I like the new look.
The bar at the top takes up a centimeter on my 20in monitor and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
I think Brain is right, People have been asking for DC to give Zope a face lift and now its got one you are all complaining about it.
Don't get me wrong the points you raised are valid but you are complaining about 32 pixels. Give it a week and you won't know what you were complaining about.
Overall it gets the thumbs up from me. :)
-Andy (P.S. Why hasn't the acl_users folder got the same style of shaded/non-shaded rows, Just a consistancy thang :)
-----Original Message----- From: zope-dev-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-dev-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: 12 January 2001 02:12 To: Steve Alexander; zope-dev@zope.org Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] New UI for 2.3
I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2.
I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time.
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse. I do a lot of TTW development, and I think I might find that cumbersome, so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-)
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
Seriously - Zope has been criticized for a very long time for being, ah, aesthetically challenged :) It is a valid criticism - we have been (and quite honestly, will continue to be) more concerned with function over form. But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding?
I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the community for reviews to come out that waste words on the visual appeal shortcomings of the UI and totally miss the point. A better first impression is a Good Thing.
The top frame is also a place where we might want to put more "placeless" operations like logout in the future. You can only jam so much into the tree pane without it looking very much like way too much is being jammed into the tree pane :) FWIW, one of the things we may put there later is a way to do "browser preferences" via cookies to control things like default text area sizes. That could also have a "hide top frame" option for those who really can't spare the 32px. :^)
Brian Lloyd brian@digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations www.digicool.com
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Andy McKay wrote:
Come on, can someone post some sample screenshots?
http://www.zope.org/Members/hathawsh/new_ui.png Shane
-- Andy McKay.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Dawkins" <andyd@nipltd.com> To: "Brian Lloyd" <brian@digicool.com>; <zope-dev@zope.org> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 12:39 AM Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] New UI for 2.3
Well just to be completely different to everyone else, I like the new look.
The bar at the top takes up a centimeter on my 20in monitor and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
I think Brain is right, People have been asking for DC to give Zope a face lift and now its got one you are all complaining about it.
Don't get me wrong the points you raised are valid but you are complaining about 32 pixels. Give it a week and you won't know what you were complaining about.
Overall it gets the thumbs up from me. :)
-Andy (P.S. Why hasn't the acl_users folder got the same style of shaded/non-shaded rows, Just a consistancy thang :)
-----Original Message----- From: zope-dev-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-dev-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: 12 January 2001 02:12 To: Steve Alexander; zope-dev@zope.org Subject: RE: [Zope-dev] New UI for 2.3
I think the new UI for 2.3 is great improvement over 2.2.
I'm already finding the sorted tables of folder contents useful, and having the add new items select at the top saves time.
However, I do not like the 3-frame interface. I feel that the top frame is wasted space. The Zope logo and "Logged in as username | Logout" could as easily go at the bottom of the tree-view frame on the left. This would leave extra screen space for doing work.
I realize that I can make the frame smaller by dragging it with my mouse. I do a lot of TTW development, and I think I might find that cumbersome, so I guess I'll be hacking the top frame out of my management interface :-)
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
Seriously - Zope has been criticized for a very long time for being, ah, aesthetically challenged :) It is a valid criticism - we have been (and quite honestly, will continue to be) more concerned with function over form. But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding?
I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the community for reviews to come out that waste words on the visual appeal shortcomings of the UI and totally miss the point. A better first impression is a Good Thing.
The top frame is also a place where we might want to put more "placeless" operations like logout in the future. You can only jam so much into the tree pane without it looking very much like way too much is being jammed into the tree pane :) FWIW, one of the things we may put there later is a way to do "browser preferences" via cookies to control things like default text area sizes. That could also have a "hide top frame" option for those who really can't spare the 32px. :^)
Brian Lloyd brian@digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations www.digicool.com
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In article <3A5F5FE3.86FCF25C@digicool.com>, Shane Hathaway <shane@digicool.com> writes
Andy McKay wrote:
Come on, can someone post some sample screenshots?
I hate the brand at the top. Put it at the bottom where it can disappear and not take up space. Can we have ownership information as well? How about switching to a more sensible permissions scheme; then we could have rwxr--r-- etc. I also would have to worry about the correct settings of 'Add Mydongle', 'View MyDongle' etc. How can the administrator keep up with the multiplicity of such things. I have more than a page full of such permissions most of which I don't understand. And will we get any better information on what causes all those permissioning failures. Telling us what causes our slightly modified product/Zclass to go down the pan and take the data with it would also be nice. -- Robin Becker
Brian Lloyd wrote:
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
Well, no, but laptops aren't known for their high resolutions and that can make demonstrating zope a pain :-S
Seriously - Zope has been criticized for a very long time for being, ah, aesthetically challenged :) It is a valid criticism - we have been (and quite honestly, will continue to be) more concerned with function over form.
That's cool, but couldn't you hire someone just to make the thing look nice? A graphic designer or usability expert who knows what's best for all these things, rather than us, a load of developers, trying to guess ;-)
But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding?
Yes... especially when you could get the same branding without wasting a whole strip of the screen...
I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the community for reviews to come out that waste words on the visual appeal shortcomings of the UI and totally miss the point. A better first impression is a Good Thing.
I totally agree, and that top bar really spoils it :-S For example, in Netscape, the bottom 5 pixels of the logo are chopped off when you first open the manage screens. In both IE and Netscape you get that horrible chunky frame border (is there any way you can make that go away for the horizontal split?) which wastes more space and looks nasty.
The top frame is also a place where we might want to put more "placeless" operations like logout in the future.
Any reason why that 'raise Unauthorized' thing couldn't have been put in? I mean it's one line, and way more useful than "Sorry, this is not yet implemented. " :-S
You can only jam so much into the tree pane without it looking very much like way too much is being jammed into the tree pane :)
Well, how about: [Root Folder] (square brackets mean black background) <tree> Refresh (having this below (c) Digital Creations makes no sense ;-) [Logged in as X] Logout <other placeless operations> Then put the Zope logo actually _in_ the manage tabs (in the dead space to the left of the 'Contents' tab) and hey presto, no nead for a top bar, still branded and looks nicer ;-)
FWIW, one of the things we may put there later is a way to do "browser preferences" via cookies to control things like default text area sizes.
This has always confused me, whats' wrong with just letting the user object be a propertymanager?! After all, the preferences you're talking about are user prefences and users will want them to follow them around, no matter what machine they're using. By implementing that, you remove the need for everyone else to resort to LoginManager any time you want to store data that is associated with a user in the user object... Right, negative comments out the way, on the whole it looks very nice and _much_ better than 2.2. Seems a lot quicker too. Really looking forward to the full release :-) cheers, Chris PS: You could always do a 'top bar' vote on www.zope.org and let everyone have their say ;-)
On Thu, 11 Jan 2001, Brian Lloyd wrote:
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
Let's put it this way: I have my window frame borders on my xwindows set to 1 pixel because I feel that the default (6?) pixel width wastes way too much screen realestate (I use tiled windows a lot). This is on a 17" 1024x768 monitor, and I'd probably do the same on a 20".
area sizes. That could also have a "hide top frame" option for those who really can't spare the 32px. :^)
<shrug>
From my (peculiar, I'll admit) point of view, there isn't much difference between the old and new interface. I like the add dropdown being at the top, I'm indifferent to the additional item information, though the sorting looks like it might be useful, and those are about the only differences I notice. See, I use w3m and I always go to 'manage_main', so I never see the other frames or any of the "pretty" graphics....
Now, if the management interface were *customizable*, all these (mild) complaints would go away <grin>. What ever happened to the 'skinnable' project? All that said, I applaud the "management quick fixes". Thanks, guys. --RDM
In article <NEBBJMDMMLHJKPBAEOPGIECNCAAA.brian@digicool.com>, Brian Lloyd <brian@digicool.com> wrote:
Are you guys working on 486's with 13in. monitors at 640x480 or something? :^)
At home I run 21" @ 1600x1280. And there's a reason I shelled out for that: I want to get lots of information on the screen. I didn't buy extra space just so you could go wasting it :^) Netscape already wastes a lot of space at the top of the window... I tend to run multiple browser windows all at the same time: one for the user's view of the application, and at least one for development. Sometimes more than one, perhaps one in the Product area for editing the zclasses and one in the mail tree for editing the app, because it's a pain to navigate back and forth between the two. Also, the laptop issue that was raised was valid.
concerned with function over form. But is it really so bad to make a 32 pixel-high concession to a small pittance of branding?
Yes.
I know that "branding" isn't important for those who are already believers, but Zope has grown enough that its reasonable to put some effort into "first impression factor". It doesn't help the
To me, this would result in a less positive first impression. Also, I really much prefered the blue tabs to the black. The black ones look much flatter. Don't get me wrong, I like what's been done with the lower part of the screen. But I hate everything above the "objecttype at path" line. And what ever happened to the Fishbowl? The only way to see way what this looks like is to download and build the alpha. That seriously limits the visibility. Also, the current fishbowl project on this is effectively negative visibility, since it contains screenshots that don't have anything to do with the actual look and feel.
Hello, I personally don't have a problem with the new UI as far as the frames are concerned. I have not used it on a laptop, so can't express any opinions concerning such. I do prefer the blue to the black. Concerning branding, it seems to me (my opinion) that up at the top would generally be more effective. Also as the items in the tree in the left frame increases, the branding keeps getting pushed down and off. It also pushes down and off the items that Brian speaks of wanting to put into the top frame. The top frame doesn't consume much more and sometimes less than some of the toolbars the browser provide and many users use. Currently in the left frame the user id is at the top. So a certain amount of the 32 pixels consumed in the new ui are already being consumed in the left frame. What is impacted the most is the right frame. These ui elements (and branding) are important and do need placed somewhere. I would rather have them like they are instead of at the bottom left frame where there position changes according to the number of items. Just my opinion. :) A couple of UI elements I've been thinking about. I don't like the "Create public interface" checkbox automatically defaulting to creating a DTML Document. Because there are multiple items which could be used as the index_html I would like to see a dropdown box/menu which allow you to select the ui element. I think currently most will want DTML Method. In the future we might be choosing HiperDOM or XMLDocument. I think a dropdown would be nice, with a potential user selected default, which could be listed in the dropdown as "default". For people come from a traditional IDE or other types of apps it isn't necessarily intuitive to click the back button or menu item in order to exit a screen that you entered but changed your mind about and are doing nothing. Yes, I understand most of us here understand that no transaction has taken place and simply going "back" or clicking on another link is okay. However, for the non-programmer content-provider user of Zope a "cancel" button which goes back might be a nice ui element. Just some thoughts. Jimmie Houchin
participants (11)
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Andy Dawkins -
Andy McKay -
Brian Lloyd -
Chris Withers -
Jimmie Houchin -
Michael Bernstein -
Robin Becker -
Shane Hathaway -
Steve Alexander -
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