[Plone-UI] Improving CMSUI toolbar w/metadata + edit bar + notifications

[Alex Limi]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Rob Gietema <rob at fourdigits.nl> wrote:

> This look really nice, I like the structure, site config and user on the
> right. I'm not sure the "add new..." is in the right location, somehow it
> should stand out more, not sure how tho.


Agreed, it's the part of the design that I'm the least happy with right now.
I wanted to make sure it didn't imply that adding something was part of the
page's interface, but rather a global operation. Suggestions welcome.


> The metadata doesn't feel right like this, the rest of the ui is nice and
> clean and this is more like "wall of text".


I think it's important to have available in some form, didn't put too much
time into the visual styling yet. It's more a "we need to figure out how to
fit this in" reminder.


> I like the status messages, but I think the default "yellow" for info,
> "orange" for warning and "red" for error works better. It would also be nice
> if we can somehow fit the messages inside menu, the problem with putting the
> messages below the menu is that it might overlap with links in the website.


Yeah, I want them to be inside the bars in most cases (info messages etc) —
but there's also the interesting case where people aren't going to look up
there for error messages that relate to their content. Those will probably
have to always be inline or near the form element in question.


> I think the menu is way too high like this, I prefer to use a "floating,
> stick to tile, stay in viewport"-toolbar.
>

Yup, it depends on how much we can slim it down. I like both approaches for
different reasons; I like the close proximity of having the bar near the
content being edited, but I like the predictability and the feeling of an
"edit mode" that the bar along the top gives you, as well as the familiarity
to people coming from Word/Pages and other word processors.


> The second toolbar will need to change to "save", "cancel",
> "pageproperties", "add tile" etc when editing using Deco.
>

Yes, I do have a version that does that.

>
>> …and as a final experiment, here's how it could look with a single-line UI
>> — didn't add all the icons, but you get the point:
>>
>> +10 for this setup, this saves a lot of space. What I do like to have is
> the icons for all the actions. The status info is a lot better like this,
> maybe even use gray text to make it different from the clickable actions.
>

Gray on blue looks kind of crappy, unfortunately.

I think we should ship with the big buttons by default, and then users can
switch the more minimal layout if they want to on a per-user basis. Being
friendly and having a recognizable look out of the box is also important. :)


> Some general feedback:
> - will we stick with blue or change it to black like some of the
> screenshots which have been made?
>

I like the blue because it's more "Plone" than nondescript black, but I'm
not very strongly opposed to black either.


> - do we want a style applied to the button when it is pressed and that
> overlay is active?
>

Yes, probably. And on hover.

-- 
Alex Limi · +limi <http://profiles.google.com/limi> · @limi · limi.net
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