[Plone-UI] PLIP 12227: In-Plone Theme Editor

[Martin Aspeli]

Hi,

I've digested the survey results a bit more and captured suggested actions here:

https://dev.plone.org/ticket/12227#comment:20

Could you please review and tell me if they capture your thoughts and
whether you'd like to add anything? I'd still really value mockups (or
HTML/TAL changes!) for improvements.

Great job on the surveys and feedback again, by the way. Especially
survey #3 was incredibly valuable (i.e. it was very specific), but all
contained very helpful information. We should do much more of this
kind of thing.

Cheers,
Martin

On 16 June 2012 10:01, Martin Aspeli <optilude+lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for this - really glad to see so much detail! I'm really
> impressed you did this much research and it's incredibly valuable.
> Thank you!
>
> I see some specific feedback, so let me ask some follow-ups:
>
> 1. The organization of the Tabs could use more work
>
> Which 'tabs' are we talking about?
>
> 2. The “Theme Mapper” layout needs to be minimized in windows and
> maximized in available space to work in.
>
> Can you be a bit more specific about this?
>
> 3. Some of the Function buttons create confusion (placement, icons, and labels)
>
> Which buttons, specifically?
>
> 4. Issues with Ajax behavior and bugs contributed to less than ideal
> interaction experience
>
> That's a shame - could you clarify which bugs you've found?
>
> 5. The grouping and steps for functions/tasks could be streamlined
>
> Can you be more specific?
>
> 6. The first panel view on launch needs work to help a user get
> started: better and more plainly instructive defaults; re-thought to
> map to users’ main goals.
>
> So, on all of these, I can guess at what the specific issues may have
> been, but I feel what we need to take this forward is a set of
> actionable suggestions, e.g. as annotated wireframes or screen
> composites. Some of this is in the detailed feedback in each survey
> (Thanks!), but I am not sure how to translate those into actual
> changes without it feeling a bit like trial-and-error.
>
> We tried to get some mockups once - Denys had a go at unifying the two
> tabs. I tried to implement that, and whilst some of the specific ideas
> were actionable, the overall approach did not work in practice (see
> detailed notes on the PLIP ticket in Trac).
>
> If, as you suggest, you (or someone else) can try to come up with
> specific ideas that someone can then translate to real Plone
> code/templates, we can get somewhere, I think. I'm just not really
> skilled enough on the UI front to read the feedback above and then go
> "aha, so it needs to work like *this*".
>
> Are you willing to try to do that (as indeed you suggested in the
> feedback)? I think that'd be incredibly valuable.
>
> Martin
>
> On 14 June 2012 21:29, Tseng-Planas, Alice <atseng at it.ucla.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Martin, Eric and All,
>>
>> As promised, here's some initial feedback from our workgroup on the
>> Plone.App.Theming product and the Theme Mapper.
>> I'm attaching a zip file with a summary of our discussion and some
>> detailed surveys that 4 members filled out who were new
>> to the Mapper.
>>
>> Overall -- I'd say that there are 2 types of folks in our group
>> (experienced with Plone) and (experienced with Web but new to Plone).
>> Those who were new to Plone tended to want to use the combo method --
>> actually using the theme-mapper to build a theme and learn Plone's
>> structure. Those who already knew Plone wanted to just import and make
>> direct changes in the html/css file structure.
>>
>> Everyone wanted the Theme-Mapper's interface to work better/be better laid
>> out in order to use it more as a tool (for the combo method) to build
>> themes (not just an inspector).
>>
>> Hope this helps.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Alice
>>
>>
>> On 5/12/12 1:18 PM, "Martin Aspeli" <optilude+lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>> Martin Aspeli wrote
>>>>>
>>>>> Feedback and support,especially with CSS and/or graphics as well as
>>>>> mock-ups or functional suggestions and hands-on testing, would be
>>>>>greatly
>>>>> appreciated.
>>>>>
>>>> Our workgroup meets once a week with 4 dedicated members + 4 more that
>>>> participate when they can. Perhaps we can begin with a first-impression
>>>> gloss of the new build? Many of us a coming to this with very fresh eyes
>>>> maybe that's the most helpful at this point. I'll talk to the group this
>>>> week -- let us know if there are specific areas of the project you're
>>>>most
>>>> interested in getting feedback for.
>>>
>>>That'd be great!
>>>
>>>Initial impressions are very valuable. Let's start there.
>>>
>>>One thing I'm keen to understand is whether designers (and/or
>>>evaluators) would consider building a theme entirely inside Plone
>>>(using a combination of the file manager and the theme mapper) or if
>>>it's always going to be about filesystem import.
>>>
>>