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Try out the new version of the site!

http://share.ez.no/new and tell us what you think here.

Administration interface refresh, take 2: tell us more of what you think!

Nicolas Pastorino

Friday 11 December 2009

eZ Publish 4.3 will take a big step towards refreshing the administration interface. A first blog post was made here (comments by the bottom of the page) , have a look at it first!
The second round is presented below, having integrated the feedback from the first round.

Progress on admin refresh is going forward and some concepts have been implemented to make it easier to discuss them. Please note that this is before the actual styling, focusing on the UI logic and not on the final graphic design itself.
For those that want to try it out, svn checkout design/admin2 and change your admin design to use that. For the rest, here are some screen shoots and comments:

eZ Admin interface refresh preview for ez Publish 4.3

Screen shoot shows possibility to drag left menu width, hide right menu, re ordering of some form elements, support for policy checks on tabs/left menu items and changes to header to save scrolling. Bellow you'll also find a proposed new way to access the context sensitive menu, inspire from ui on dropbox and others currently nick named hover action menu.

eZ Admin interface refresh hover menu preview for ez Publish 4.3

How it works: When hovering over items in sub items (could also be content tree menu as well) a menu icon pop's up, if the user hover over that a menu expands with several items and deeper sub items. The menu should of course have icons as well, but this is just to show of the basic idea of making the context menu more intuitive for users.

eZ Publish 4.3 admin refresh edit interface in full screen mode with attribute grouping, class and class attribute description (help text)

Above is a preview of the edit interface, with full screen editing, extra tool bar on top that has fixed position in full screen view and description/help text on class and class attributes.

To continue tweeting about this, you may want to use the following hashtags: #ezpublish, #ezadmin.

Latest comments ( see all )

  • Marko Zmak, 20/04/2010 1:52 pm
    "

    I find it quite funny that in the same message you say that the interface you've shown as an example is good because it is what customers expect and is used by most products, and later on you explain that what you would expect for eZ Publish is an innovative interface.

    "

    Actually is not so funny. When a new and refreshed admin interface comes it should have at least one of this two features:

    - something fresh and innovative

    - a visual enhachment that will make users say "wow!"

    This new eZ admin interface doesn't have any of these two features. Yes, it is an improvement, but it doesn't seem as a big one and it's coming a little bit late.

    As for the "innovative" part, I'm not talking about inventing brand new things and concepts, but about making innovative solutions for the user needs.


  • Bertrand Dunogier, 20/04/2010 12:03 pm

    I find it quite funny that in the same message you say that the interface you've shown as an example is good because it is what customers expect and is used by most products, and later on you explain that what you would expect for eZ Publish is an innovative interface.

    Should we innovate, with the risk that this won't fit what the customers expect, as they expect what they know, or stick to what is known as working ?

    Regarding administration interfaces, it's far from being a simple debate. Maybe end customers aren't looking for what is in admin2 (and I'll add that it depends on the end customer), but maybe it is what administrators are looking for ? Or developers ? I don't think a distinct admin interface will ever be able to match anybody's needs. That's why we, and most products, encourage a smart integration of a front-end editing interface, as the only interface an editor usually knows about is his website's.


  • Marko Zmak, 20/04/2010 11:43 am

    Morten, your thinking is reasonable and has some good points, but I still think that the new admin interface is still far away from fresh and innovative. It still needs a lot of work and a lot of good usability ideas.


  • Morten Zetlitz, 20/04/2010 11:30 am
    "

    As for the Kentico, I'm not saying that is revolutionary, but it's what most clients like. And the fact that it looks like "a zillion other CMSs out there" only shows that this is the design and look that clients want.

    "

    Marko, I apologize, I mistook your quote in your signature for your name.

    Anyways, I beg to differ. The reason why you feel this is probably because the client haven't seen anything else. It is not what clients like, it is what clients have been having to deal with for years.

    I agree with you that the admin UI has no unique selling points both past and present. But eZ has heaps of it. As I said, focus on the strengths and do a presentation of the ease of use. Clients wants to save time and gain a happy workday doing so, so by showing how quick you can edit (either through the admin or the frontend) will make your case.

    What eZ admin UI needs is user testing, user testing and user testing. Regardless of how many jquery eases or collapsible divs, fancy icons or not, the raw feedback from clients and admins who use this daily will tell you what clients need. I doubt it is Kentico UI or the current admin UI.


  • Marko Zmak, 20/04/2010 10:58 am

    Morten, the websiteinterface frontend editor of is nothing special or innovative, it's just an addon that can easily be implemented in most other CMSs. And many clients don't want this kind of "ease of use", but an administration with many useful and sparkly features.

    As for the Kentico, I'm not saying that is revolutionary, but it's what most clients like. And the fact that it looks like "a zillion other CMSs out there" only shows that this is the design and look that clients want.

    As for focusing my presentation, most of the stregths that eZ has, are to complicated for the client to undesrstand (remember that the client is not an IT specialist, but mostly some chief or manager). Importing Word documents is the only true presentational feature of eZ that makes a difference for such people. And here it stops.

    Also, editing permission and roles is something that an average client is not interested in and doesn't even want to know about it.

    I'm not saying that the bad admin interface is the main issue for eZ Publish, but making a more advanced and innovative interface would make a great presentational difference for eZ Publish, and would greatly help it's promotion. I think it's worth to make an effort in this direction.

    For the end, just one question: What's sells a car (or even a web page), it's many powerful features that are known only to the mechanics or it's look and design?


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