Looks good. I'd be all for it. We get a lot of complaints from our editors
about the wizerds.
ernst

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Nico Klasens [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Verzonden: dinsdag 7 oktober 2003 10:24
> Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Onderwerp: Editwizards look&feel
> 
> 
> Hello Users and Developers,
> 
> The editwizards are the standard editors for our mmbase 
> projects at the
> moment. We usually only change some colors in the mmbase 
> editwizards to
> match the customers brand. Several customers told us that they didn't
> like the look&feel of the wizards. A first-time user has a lot of
> problems to figure out how the wizards work. 
> The editors of Web-In-A-Box had a redesign when we upgraded it to a
> newer version of MMbase. The new design is much more 
> user-friendly then
> the editwizards. Two weeks ago I proposed on the devlist to make this
> 'WIAB' look the default one for the editwizards. The suggestion was to
> create an extension on the current stylesheets and override the things
> we don't like. So, the past 2 weeks I have been doing this. The
> extension now overrides 75% of the default one to get it the 
> way we want
> it. I only tested it on IE yet so probably there will be more code to
> get it working cross browser.
> 
> Some changes I made to get it more user-friendly are:
> 
> - Apart from the color change worked a lot on lay-out in order to
> improve the look and feel.
> - One wizardscreen can consist of more pages: steps. It is just a list
> with a previous and next button. We made 'tabs' of it, 
> because everyone
> is familiar with that concept.
> - Wizards can become very long. An improvement is to use steps, but
> switching screens still requires a lot of scrolling. In our extension
> the buttons and tabs stay on the screen all the time.
> - Showing links to attachements and images only when they are 
> present in
> the system. No dead links.
> 
> The list of related objects are the messiest parts in the mmbase
> wizards. Most of the extension code concerns this part.
> - Better distinction between list of related objects and which buttons
> belongs to them.
> - Adding related objects by searching or creating a new one is on one
> line and clearly seperated from the listed objects. 
> - Every listed object is shown screenwide and is separated by a line
> from the other objects.
> - The buttons to manipulate the object are grouped on the same line as
> the object.
> - Editting an object can be done to click on the listed object.
> - The searchscreen is a popup instead of an iframe. This way 
> the window
> can easily be resized and moved around the screen. The iframe usually
> pops up with parts outside the screen.
> - Images in the searchsreen are non-clickable. Usually, users 
> select the
> image by clicking on it. In the mmbase version the iframe dissapears,
> because the image is shown fullscreen. We provide a link beneath the
> image.
> 
> We have the current version online at http://editwizards.finalist.com.
> The wizards with the extension are slower then normal because 
> right now
> the implementation has to work with both (default and extension). That
> is why we like to make it the mmbase default. With this much more
> user-friendly layout the only thing you want are some hooks for extra
> functionality and an easy way to change colors. I'm working on making
> that very easy well by reworking the CSS files.
> 
> Just try them out and let us know what you think and if there are any
> reason why this should not become the default.
> 
> Nico Klasens
> 
> Finalist IT Group
> Java Specialists
> 
> 

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