Current Design

Problems

Most of the functionality is there, but the layout is confusing and inconsistent.

Confusing layout

• General
  • Inconsistency in navigation: some pages have a table of contents, some pages

jump right into a list with navigation at the top of the page

• Publishing features
  • Where to go? Ah, i need to click on "categories" first
  • Inconsistent: Access "feature" (blurb) administration via the category page, access article administration through the "articles" page. both associated with one or more categories
  • Publishing a feature live is confusing
    • Possible new way to do it: present option at publish time to make live or to "hold" it for review
    • Make it simpler to preview just one feature at publish time
  • Sf-active doesn't know whether a feature is "live" or not -- need to resolve ambiguity from cached versus "current, archived, hidden"
  • Feature "order" is made prominent, while changing the order is a very infrequent task. In particular, you are forced to be aware of the "order number" which is something that only the internal sf-active software should care about.
    • Alternative: just provide arrows (or other interface element) to visually re-arrange
• Cities list
  • Clicking "cities" on left column automatically regenerates the cities list, even if it's not the correct format

Missing functionality

• No facility to manage existing media
• Not easy to add links to existing document to a feature, or to insert a link to media -- why not let the computer do the work of writing a URL or IMG tag?
• Can't easily add new interface documents -- like the about page, etc -- through the admin pages
• no privilege separation

Alternative Layouts

Task Oriented

Tasks include:

Content

• Moderate Newswire
• Manage Features
• Manage Feature Images
• Manage Dossiers
• Manage Calendar
• Manage RSS feeds (*)

Customization

• Customize Categories, Themes, Topics, and Locations
• Upload / manage media files (**)
• Edit CSS files (**)
• Edit document library / static pages (*)
• Edit templates

Internationalization

• Languages
• Translation Strings (*)

Administration

• Users
• Update cached files
• Update Cities List
• Spam Control
• Advanced Configuration (*)

Site Usage

• Latest Comments
• Usage Statistics
• Error Log

* Unimplemented features ** Needs enhancement

-- QuintenSteenhuis - 07 Dec 2004

• An example icon-based layout:
  

Note that this is missing some of the admin modules and some of the icons are inconsistent...just consider the layout and idea of an icon-based layout for now.

-- Note from gwen

Finding where to change one's password is non-intuitive starting out.
to top