What happend to the Joomla back-end gui ?

[jgo]

Hi,

Since 3.0 its looking worst and worst, not to mention backward compatibility. Our users have a hard time to get used to it. For instance the settings for components or plugins are just awful to use and look really bad. I saw you guys took a shortcut and use bootstrap with apparently no benefits for end-users. Now, I'm wondering is this going back to normal or improves any time soon or , you may consider to drop the shiny buttons stuff or offer a more minimal theme for the back-end sometime ?

Sorry for being so harsh, but seriously, I am also having a hard time with the new GUI and I'm behind the keyboard since 1986 and I also think it got really bad since 3.0. Worst even, its being promoted already as 'stable' and is even being pushed through the Plesk app installers.

However, I i am trying to investigate the range and completeness of the Joomla GUI API in order to figure out I can wrap the interface shown below into a Joomla compatible interface, using Dojo-Bootstrap but I can't see the benefits of using the Joomla 'built-in' frameworks for GUI at all.  

 

Well, are there improvements on the roadmap ? Or how can I figure out what's being planned for the Joomla - GUI in the comming years ? 

thanks and sorry, take it as feedback please. 

g

 

[Donald Gilbert]

Since this is a volunteer project, you would do well to put some code where your criticism is and submit it as a pull request.

[Bakual]

You can always create your own backend template, or improve one of the two backend templates shipped with Joomla. I think there is someone working on improving the Hathor template.

 

As always the GUI is subject to your personal opinions. Personally I find the new GUI a huge improvement over the one in J! 2.5. I don't see how people have a hard time to find stuff. But I know that people experience stuff different, so I don't think my opinion has to be valid for everyone ;-)

[Marco Biagioni]

I think new GUI is absolutely unusable and change it so deeply have been a big mistake for Joomla.
I'm a professional Joomla developer since 2003 and my business is Joomla.

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[jgo]

On Sunday, 9 June 2013 20:48:20 UTC+2, Donald Gilbert wrote:

Since this is a volunteer project, you would do well to put some code where your criticism is and submit it as a pull request.

Thanks for your reply. I really would love to but it feels that there are no clear policies nor guidance from the core team. I can't simply submit things when its getting rejected anyway. 

[jgo]

Hi all,

finally this makes some waves :-) 

I'll make indeed a little report about all problems with the new GUI which went terribly wrong, according to me, developer since 1990, my colleagues and my test users (long-term Joomla users).

It'll take need some time to do this but expect me back next week. I hope that's accepted as constructive critics then.

Thanks for reading !

[Donald Gilbert]

I'm a professional Joomla developer since 2003 and my business is Joomla.

If you have been a commercial Joomla dev for 10 years (impressive, considering Joomla was released in 2005) then I'm sure you were around over a year ago when we had the bootstrap discussions. Your insight would have been valuable at that time, but trying to criticize after the fact is a little backwards, don't you think?

[Marco Biagioni]

Well i'm developer for Joomla extensions and not for Joomla itself. However i started with Mambo at the time... but Joomla has made too many
mistakes in past years, and if i was into discussions i had not permitted many policies.

Joomla born has a too young project and today pay for this... too many versions without a logic evolution and backwards compatibility

I'm sorry for this because i spent many years of my life in Joomla project

Il 09/06/2013 21.12, Donald Gilbert ha scritto:

I'm a professional Joomla developer since 2003 and my business is Joomla.

If you have been a commercial Joomla dev for 10 years (impressive, considering Joomla was released in 2005) then I'm sure you were around over a year ago when we had the bootstrap discussions. Your insight would have been valuable at that time, but trying to criticize after the fact is a little backwards, don't you think?

[jgo]

Btw. are there any style/interface guidelines or drafts regarding Joomla-3 ? I'd love to take this into account for my 'feedback' report. I was looking though the Google-Docs repos and the main site but I couldn't find anything.

Thank you  

[Donald Gilbert]

There is a style guide in progress. Seth Warburton heads up the JUX / JUI now. I'll try to get him to take a look at this thread.

[dean.b...@lightquick.co.uk]

There is no point in creating your own back end as you are not allowed
to publish it on the JED. We're talking about "look and feel" here and
not functionality. If the JED team were more flexible in allowing
alternative back end templates then there would probably be many more of
them. As it is we're pretty well stuck with the basic template as
supplied. The only allowed alternative templates have been those that
offer 'more' functionality (whatever that is). The accepted alternative
templates on the JED may have functionality which may not be what we
want. You may just want a different look and feel.

I have always thought it was a very inflexible attitude, I created two
admin templates and the rejection of both put me off creating any more.
I stopped contributing after that.

[Michael Babker]

There is a templates directory being worked on just for this.  No idea when it'll go live, but that issue is being worked on.

On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 4:20 PM, dean.b...@lightquick.co.uk <dean.b...@lightquick.co.uk> wrote:

There is no point in creating your own back end as you are not allowed to publish it on the JED. We're talking about "look and feel" here and not functionality. If the JED team were more flexible in allowing alternative back end templates then there would probably be many more of them. As it is we're pretty well stuck with the basic template as supplied. The only allowed alternative templates have been those that offer 'more' functionality (whatever that is). The accepted alternative templates on the JED may have functionality which may not be what we want. You may just want a different look and feel.

I have always thought it was a very inflexible attitude, I created two admin templates and the rejection of both put me off creating any more. I stopped contributing after that.

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[dean.b...@lightquick.co.uk]

There was always a place in the JED for administrator templates, there
probably still is. They just refused point blank to accept any unless
they met certain unpublished criteria. The only one I was able to
discern was that an admin template needed to do 'more' than the
standard. Changing the "look and feel" was simply disallowed.

That rule needs to be dug out, reviewed and published or eliminated
altogether.

The publishing and maintenance of this rule seems to be a tender point
for some... not quite sure why. There is some history here.

[jgo]

One of the biggest pain now is simply that you feel pretty lost with almost 50+ settings for an item. Its nice to have the top tabs now but I'd love to see at least some visual guidance there. It somehow mutated to a pro-admin guy only and now, its like you removing on OSX the main menu. I think that way -even improved- doesn't drive much users happy and rather leave them in the rain.  

The beauty of previous version was simplicity and clear contrast between property panels and action bars, yes with big buttons in fixed places.

Another really annoying workflow is that I still need to walk to some plugin settings in order to control some visual aspects of core content whilst they should belong together in one panel (I know 'they' could...).

So yes, plugins and its properties really deserve more freedom and space in built-in UI but clearly separate looking.

It seems a bit early to enable in-place editing in the front-end and! back-end but I can recommend to build another layer on the built-in widgets to serve better non-admin users in the back-end.

g

[Niv Froehlich]

1) Just in case you haven't yet, take a look at Kyle Ledbetter's
Bootstrapping presentation - his efforts are primarily aimed at
component developers. The video is about 45 minutes, but the
presentation is about 15 min with an answer and question session;

Bootstrapping Joomla 3.0 Best Practices and Standards
http://youtu.be/OXEx5wMF4fo

2) The use of Bootstrap was not a 'short cut' but an attempt for a
'consistent framework,' or JUI, for component developers;

3) No standards, or 'best practice' guidelines have been set yet -
Kyle asks for feedback and input.

I hope that helps a little bit.

IMO - Personally I think the choice to use 'Bootstrap' is secondary to
having a 'best-practice guidelines' aimed at a consistent UI/UX for
component developers. Kyle, who is a UX expert for eBay - speaks to
some best-practices. Personally, I'd love to see those clearly
defined as recommendations. Bootstrap then becomes a convenient
framework to meet those guidelines.

Anyways - I'm still really new at this stuff - but my thoughts - hope it helps.

N

[Ove]

I'm not sure that it's worth commenting but:

You obviously missed the train to the bootstraped Joomla standards. As
there were no standards at all before, this was a big step for 3.pd
developers. As I understand work is going on to extend those standards,
e.g. I never understood why I have to duplicate modules because of
different module positions in templates.

Reading your complaints I only find the specific claim that the dividers
in the settings do not show the image. Yes! true and I also miss it. (
100+ settings )

There are other things like the left sidebar that I can't use as is
because of of my 10+ submenus.

Conclusion: please be more specific in you complaints and you might find
some friends with the same ideas.

Ove

[Hannes Papenberg]

Hello,
I feel a bit with jgo. Yes, the move to a standardized HTML is probably
the best that Joomla has done in the template area since beez 1.0 and
while I'm not overly excited with the new color scheme for the
administrator in the backend, I'm pretty sure that it's mostly because
of old habits.

However I'm with jgo regarding the placement of elements. Right now the
backend is almost not usable for me on my laptop. The backend currently
looks like it is written for large screens, but my laptop screen only
has 1280x800 pixel, which means that I have to scroll whenever I want to
set the filters in a list view. Equal discomfort with the parameters.
Right now I would vote for moving the submenu, filters and parameters
back into the same place they were before.

I would also vote for using SCSS instead of LESS, but that is only
because I have a distaste of (the original) LESS... ;-)

Hannes

[jgo]

hi, yes, this major show stopper. even the most complex gui must first work on smaller displays as netbooks (1024x600). that way you are somehow also forced to think about usability and then visuals.

[jgo]

Hi,

I didn't came up here to go into very specific details. Complaining about concrete usability flaws is valid feedback from a long-term user I think and for me as front-end dev, I am always happy to hear about those things ! Its like that you close the issue 'with working as intended' and all cruel to users can go ahead.  

However, its nice to introduce standards but you can't throw - worst even - push  this on the market (Plesk) as 'ready' whilst its obviously a quite a few revisions too early for that. It shouldn't leave the drawing board at all yet. Using Boostrap in its full advantage would actually require a complete webservice implementation for Joomla back-end tasks. It's also designed to enable modern admin dash-boards but what I see now in Joomla3 is far away from that. Actually all the painful workflows did remain the same in Joomla-3 except its looking a bit better and works better for devs only.

I really hope you consider my recommendation of introducing a new interface layer for the non-pro-admin audience. Because I see it as chance to gain new users (Wordpress,...) with a easy to use interface whilst providing professionals a more detailed interface.

[Niv Froehlich]

IMO - all of these are valid discussions and points - the only
comment, or reminder that I have is that there are a lot of very
talented volunteers putting efforts towards these issues, so I think
being extra careful with the tone of emails always goes along way.

That said, Kyle's presentation (as set out above Bootstrapping Joomla
3.0 Best Practices and Standards http://youtu.be/OXEx5wMF4fo) really
speaks to these matters.

I'd like to know if there has been further progress, in particular, on
any 'guidelines' or 'best-practices' for UI/UX, and if anybody can
point me to any relevant docs/links - that would be greatly
appreciated.

I've also seen some discussion, in the thread

"[jgen] Updating to Bootstrap 2.3.1, to solve Dropdown on iPad and
iPhone" which speaks creating an approach in which core mark up would
not have to be updated with new revisions - and idea proposed by Seth
which I'd like to learn more about

These issues are inter-related - and perhaps better served with a
dedicated thread - one I'd love to learn from and be a part of, in
particular because I really dig UI/UX, and like the rest of us, don't
want to be bogged down by endless code maintenance as standards
change.

A couple of things that Bootstrap has really brought to the table are
a) rapid development of UIs; and b) consistency (i.e. a defined
standard/SDK) - so while there might be some complaints - it really
is, IMO, a wonderful direction and something that we ought to build
on.

N

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[Amy Stephen]

On Monday, June 10, 2013 6:46:35 AM UTC-5, jgo wrote:

Hi,

I didn't came up here to go into very specific details. Complaining about concrete usability flaws is valid feedback from a long-term user I think and for me as front-end dev, I am always happy to hear about those things ! Its like that you close the issue 'with working as intended' and all cruel to users can go ahead.  

What if your user came to you and said this:

Since 3.0 its looking worst and worst, not to mention backward compatibility. Our users have a hard time to get used to it. For instance the settings for components or plugins are just awful to use and look really bad. I saw you guys took a shortcut and use bootstrap with apparently no benefits for end-users. Now, I'm wondering is this going back to normal or improves any time soon or , you may consider to drop the shiny buttons stuff or offer a more minimal theme for the back-end sometime ?

Other than knowing "they really, really, really disapprove", what specifically do you think they are identifying as a problem?

• Where would you begin to work?
• How would you know when that work was complete?
• What criteria would you use to judge if you had met the requirements of the engagement?

Unfortunately, the type of feedback you provided is not helpful. It does little more than project your overall personally held opinion on the Administrator, as a whole. It's clear -- you do not like it. That's fine, I have no problem with someone expressing that opinion. But, understand that there is nothing specific in your comments that would even begin to inform a developer what action is required. It's a complaint without any clearly defined action.

Further, there is no justification for action since you have presented no data, no usability results, no testing, no comparisons to standards, no links to references, in all honesty, it appears there was very little thought behind those comments -- there isn't even a screen shot with a big red circle and an X on it. Would I be wrong if I guessed it took five minutes, or less, to type that email and post it? That's fine, but, you gotta admit, that's just a rant, right? Can't really close the issue as "working as intended" because you have not articulated the issue. It's as simple as that.

Earlier you said "finally, this makes some waves" with a smile. Well, it's super easy to make waves. What's not easy is actually fixing something and I challenge you to do that. Take one specific problem, even an easy one, fix it, issue a PR against the code, and engage in debate with others to convince them it's the right direction. If you are able to get it all the way from "going from worst to worst" to changing even 2 lines of CSS, then you'll have accomplished something.

To be clear, I do not accept "But, I am not a programmer" or "I don't know how" as valid excuses. Here's why. It's not like anyone is born knowing how to do these things, especially given how quickly technology is advancing. Anyone who has skills to fix problems gained those skills through personal effort and significant investment of time. Those who are serious about wanting their open source software to improve also understand they are obligated to help, they don't expect others to do their work for them. So, they made a commitment to learn -- and did so. Anyone can do that. Those using Joomla to earn a living really owe it to themselves to be part of making certain their software works properly.

This community will help those who are trying to make Joomla better, so if you take this challenge of fixing one issue that you see as a problem, you can ask any question you have as you work and help will be quickly available. No question is silly, we do understand that people need assistance to learn to do this work.

In the end, that is the only way the software gets better -- if someone does something. If you are interested in doing that, cool. I guarantee you'll learn a lot and in the process, you'll gain new appreciation for challenging it can be to make something better and why comments like you provided end up being more of a discouragement than help.

Thanks.

[Ove]

Hi,
what is a front-end-dev? Any ( component ) development is for me first mainly done for the backend and the result is used in frontend views. Well, we should leave this backend/frontend terminology and speak of a administrator dash-board or alike. It's a goal stated by Joomla to go this way. I do not see the advantages but a lot of disadvantages, mainly regarding sessions. This goal could include a dash-board-light for users but do not expect ( non commercial ) component developers to deliver any needed extended code.

Anyone who wants to use Joomla without the included basic Javascripts and Css can do it but have to apply overrides to a lot of the views.

If you want changes please join the force that transfers the backend to a frontend dash-board.  Joomla is an Open Source Community and nothing will happen if not a member of the community steps in and code it.

Complaints like "Backend is a disaster" or any other general statement will not move the project in a positive direction. Positive suggestions for change might be adopted even if you do not code them yourself.

Obviously Bootstrap brings some backward compatibility issues, The Joomla! project will though not be able to present a framework like this for Css and Js  so I do not see the alternative.

Think positive!
Ove

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[crocoast]

I totally agree with Amy.  Its of no use for anyone to bash and not support the bashing with some examples.

I have few problems with GUI but with help of others, forums, github community, and friends we overcame those ------ ALL thanks to the wonderful work that has been done by this community.

Now with that said i would like to say that i do have one problem with GUI and that is the left hand sub-menu.  In all fairness its a lot cleaner design but when you get 4, 5 or 6 extensions in there then it gets to a point its not the best solution out there.  Primary and foremost the biggest issue i have with it is that under tablet view the scrolling gets messy, sometimes it just wont scroll below a certain point, maybe this is just my iPad bugging out haven't tried it on other tablets.

Second, which i think would be beneficial to end user who are not used to Joomla back-end.  Maybe, just maybe there should be a workflow guide - for filling out article forms etc, since i noticed with few of my users they get lost with all tabs etc.  maybe we should think about making a path for them, like for instance to make them not forget to do certain tasks, like assigning a menu, or putting in option here and there that is needed for basic functions.  I say this because people call me all the time and they just forget to assign menu to a parent menu, or article to a subcategory. Imagine how many problems that causes with people who have 10+ new menu, submenu or articles per day added to a site.  That is my only gripe i have so far except other little bugs that are being already worked on.

On Sunday, 9 June 2013 20:24:29 UTC+2, jgo wrote:

[dean.b...@lightquick.co.uk]

+1

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[Ove]

@croacoastt
You should open a new thread with you ideas/thoughts. Too important to
get lost here. i.e. how to force input to a field.

[Thomas PAPIN]

Hello,

Just two images than explain for me one of the main problem of the new backend UI.
Even if I like the look, there is IMHO a lost in productivity with 3.X.

First Image, is the configuration of a plugin in 2.5
http://imageshack.us/a/img266/6672/admin25.png

Second Image, is the configuration of the same plugin in 3.X
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/3659/admin30.png

* On 2.5, Without any user interaction (one good rule in UX is to limit the number of clicks or other interaction to get the data), you can see the basic options. on 3.X you need first to click on the basic options tab.

* On 2.5, You can see all the basic options on the same screen, this is not possible on 3.X

* On 2.5, If you are in the basic details and you want to check something in the "Details" you need to click on the first tab, you cannot check both together.

In case of a module option, we have generally the basic options link to the menu assignement of the module. I mean you can have the same modules with different basic options depending on menu assignement. With 3.X you need to click first on Basic Details then on Menu Assignement. No "big picture" of the module configuration

[Thomas PAPIN]

I just forgot that:

* on 2.5 you can see all the basic options of the plugin. need to scroll on 3.X

* on 2.5 you can add your own "icon title" per page, on 3.X you have the "Joomla Logo" instead. with doesn't help to identify visually the page

* Joomla 3.X is responsive, it should adapt window to the screen, but in this case, half of the screen is unused (right part) even if the resolution is only 1300px, Seems that it's more a template for a 9/16 screen than a 16/9 screen :-)

2013/6/10 Thomas PAPIN <thomas...@gmail.com>

[jgo]

Hi,
now I am hearing over and over that I need put my 'critics' into code or join teams. However, I'd love to but
there is still no clean and complete web service API to manage back-end tasks for core plugins, content, components,... That makes it impossible to really improve things with a more up-to-date GUI. Then, I doubt I'll be able to use a Dojo based Bootstrap. jQuery is nice for beginners but giving the complexity of the CMS and workflows which need to be clearly guided, its just the wrong choice.

However,
if you provide the webservice for Joomla, I'll be on board ! I just had a short look into the recent J3 code and I believe I can make you an awesome web application (admin dashboard) serving both audiences : pros and novices with the same GUI code by adding adaptive levels of details, the same way I already layered our mobile app studio, targeting 2 different skill levels.

Now regarding web-services, I only found only proposals. If there is any estimate when it will be ready, I am glad to hear it now !

I also believe that without a proper web service, Joomly will stay stuck to technologies from yesterday. I cant wait to make my 'mashup' of the Joomla back/front end and I'd love to see what others will do with that !

amen 

  

 

On Sunday, 9 June 2013 20:24:29 UTC+2, jgo wrote:

Hi,

Since 3.0 its looking worst and worst, not to mention backward compatibility. Our users have a hard time to get used to it. For instance the settings for components or plugins are just awful to use and look really bad. I saw you guys took a shortcut and use bootstrap with apparently no benefits for end-users. Now, I'm wondering is this going back to normal or improves any time soon or , you may consider to drop the shiny buttons stuff or offer a more minimal theme for the back-end sometime ?

[Hannes Papenberg]

Sorry, but that is most likely the stupidest that I've read here in a
long time. What you are saying is "The backend sucks, everything looks
different and is unusable right now since 2.5. Change it. Oh and I will
only help you change it when Joomla first throws all extensions out of
the window, throws out all representational code, starts with a blank
slate and chooses Dojo to build a new interface." That is neither
helpfull nor realistic. You know as well as we do, that you can't start
from scratch with a huge project like this. Introducing all the changes
that you requested BEFORE you do anything at all will require years of
work from all these volunteer coders and testers.

I thought this discussion might start as a constructive evaluation of
the current backend, but the way the threadstarter is behaving here, I
wished I rather had not joined in on this.

Hannes

> <https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Z0uhbN2AvUA/UbTFGnw1LFI/AAAAAAAAATQ/KzbVUZd7QT4/s1600/xas3.jpg>

>
> Well, are there improvements on the roadmap ? Or how can I figure
> out what's being planned for the Joomla - GUI in the comming years ?
>
> thanks and sorry, take it as feedback please.
> g
>
>

[jgo]

yeah, you got me ! sometimes its good to step back and take deep breath before doing anything which could ruin the project on the long.

then, how much more I need to point out the obvious things again ? I already asked for documents to provide you with a proper review. But no, there is just styleguide in progress.

For your consideration, Dojo has been much better fit to the MVC based approach in the core code. All the possibilities to have server side widgets, OOP based applications in JS have been wiped out with jQuery. Also mixing platform css with device css and 3th party css and last not but least editable user css : gone with jQuery and Bootrstrap. Then as next, providing a good interfaces for people with disabilities (ARIA,..), gone with jQuery & Boostrap. I know, you could do this with a hundreds of usually poor plugins but hey, do you really think this is sustainable on the long ?

well, thanks. I am leaving here.

[Amy Stephen]

On Monday, June 10, 2013 11:16:13 AM UTC-5, jgo wrote:

Hi,
now I am hearing over and over that I need put my 'critics' into code or join teams.

Well, I know it's disappointing, but we don't pay people to work here and we don't pay for Joomla, so, we can't really tell people what to do. Right? That's why it's recommended that you pick a problem and work on it. That's always going to be your best chance of getting what you need. (You could also hire someone to do it for you, if preferred, but before you do that, really recommend you spend some time trying to identify the specifics of what you are hiring them to do, or you might not be any happier when they are done if they guess incorrectly.)

Now - agree with Hannes, it would be great to see something constructive come out of this thread. Crocoast and Thomas both had good points that would be useful for creating a list a group might work on as improvements in the next release. Those are actionable. Provided folks are willing to help, that could be the beginnings of a potential list of improvements for the coming release. Have to see what Seth thinks since he is leading in this area.

Nothing wrong with pointing out what can be improved. That's important, in fact. Doing it like Crocoast and Thomas did helps generate good discussion and get folks excited to participate -- the points are clearly made, no jabs or unnecessary comments, and the goals are doable. More of that is good!

[Gary Jay Brooks]

Team,

I personally think we would be fine to start with small iterations.  For the people who has hands/brains that can do this type of labor, why not setup a continues integration setup of Joomla and start to show people your new view changes, and ask them to be merged. People who will create new views or improvements are going to have to visually show examples for the community to react to them.  Realistically speaking - many of us will lack the time and knowledge to make everything happen for a brand new admin UI, and it would not be wise for us to jolt the user base instantly in future versions of Joomla. We have plenty of tools/code/bootstrap/CSS/ in the current work flow that we can use to improve the UI/UX.  If you care about usability, pick a small spot and start to help fix. I bet Kyle himself would have stated that we have room for lots of tweaks.

Kyle said this to me in a chat - - maybe this will  help some of you that are looking to help.  Get your CSS hands out and bootstrap your socks. :)  

[4/30/2013 3:34:33 PM] Gary Brooks: kyle do you have all the source files fom the Joomla admin template?

[4/30/2013 3:34:37 PM] Gary Brooks: Would you be willing to share them?

[4/30/2013 4:28:55 PM] Kyle Ledbetter (pixelpraise): source files like artwork?

[4/30/2013 4:29:25 PM] Kyle Ledbetter (pixelpraise): i design straight in code these day :) not fireworks or photoshop files or anything

[4/30/2013 4:37:53 PM | Edited 4:37:59 PM] Gary Brooks: :)  So the entire back-end of Joomla is from you doing direct bootstrap and CSS updates?

[4/30/2013 4:38:45 PM] Kyle Ledbetter (pixelpraise): dat's right

[4/30/2013 4:39:20 PM] Kyle Ledbetter (pixelpraise): it all stemmed from my first concept which was also designed directly in code http://pixelpraise.com/j3ux/admin/

[4/30/2013 4:41:24 PM] Gary Brooks: you are the pimp master  - :)

[Niv Froehlich]

Just to add quickly:

Kyle, in his presentation, spend some time outside of the
'technical/coding' aspects to talk about GUI
layouts/conventions/usability.

Would it not make sense to get some traction on that issue and get
some firm guidelines (i.e. benefits of left nav vs. horizontal,
placing often used UI components on screen for easy access, etc.)?

I would like to be a part of that discussion. I really see the
code/frameworks as secondary to that goal.

Any thoughts on this?

N

[Bakual]

I think with Bootstrap and JLayouts it should be quite easy to have the menu on the left side for bigger screens and on top for smaller displays. If that's better for UI.

[piotr_cz]

jgo>
I had problems with adapting to J3 Backend, but now I find it more
convenient than in 1.6-2.5.

But anyways IMO current state of Joomla is over-engineered and this is
a killer for newcomers.
Best new feature would be moving some things out to extensions that
are not included main distribution, but maintained by project. I think
can change with app-store project + refactoring 4.0


There few GSOC 2013 projects related to this topic:
- Hathor is beautiful
- Accesssible Backend Template
- Improvements to Template Manager for CMS 3

see

GSOC 2013 Project Ideas
http://docs.joomla.org/GSOC_2013_Project_Ideas

GSOC 2013 Use Group
https://groups.google.com/group/joomla-gsoc-2013

On Jun 9, 8:24 pm, jgo <baumgart.guen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Since 3.0 its looking worst and worst, not to mention
> backward compatibility. Our users have a hard time to get used to it. For
> instance the settings for components or plugins are just awful to use and
> look really bad. I saw you guys took a shortcut and use bootstrap with
> apparently no benefits for end-users. Now, I'm wondering is this going back
> to normal or improves any time soon or , you may consider to drop the shiny
> buttons stuff or offer a more minimal theme for the back-end sometime ?
>
> Sorry for being so harsh, but seriously, I am also having a hard time with
> the new GUI and I'm behind the keyboard since 1986 and I also think it got
> really bad since 3.0. Worst even, its being promoted already as 'stable'
> and is even being pushed through the Plesk app installers.
>
> However, I i am trying to investigate the range and completeness of the
> Joomla GUI API in order to figure out I can wrap the interface shown below
> into a Joomla compatible interface, using Dojo-Bootstrap but I can't see
> the benefits of using the Joomla 'built-in' frameworks for GUI at all.
>

> <https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Z0uhbN2AvUA/UbTFGnw1LFI/AAAAAAAAAT...>

[Javier Gómez]

I would like to invite anyone with UX improvement ideas to participate in the UX forum: http://ux.joomla.org/forum/index

We are actually collecting task so devs can work on them: http://ux.joomla.org/forum/Miscellaneous-details---open-area/1568-UX-Task-list-for-developers-to-be-coded-during-Pizza-Bugs-and-Fun-on-12th-July13

Please join ^_^

El domingo, 9 de junio de 2013 20:24:29 UTC+2, jgo escribió:

Hi,

Since 3.0 its looking worst and worst, not to mention backward compatibility. Our users have a hard time to get used to it. For instance the settings for components or plugins are just awful to use and look really bad. I saw you guys took a shortcut and use bootstrap with apparently no benefits for end-users. Now, I'm wondering is this going back to normal or improves any time soon or , you may consider to drop the shiny buttons stuff or offer a more minimal theme for the back-end sometime ?

Sorry for being so harsh, but seriously, I am also having a hard time with the new GUI and I'm behind the keyboard since 1986 and I also think it got really bad since 3.0. Worst even, its being promoted already as 'stable' and is even being pushed through the Plesk app installers.

However, I i am trying to investigate the range and completeness of the Joomla GUI API in order to figure out I can wrap the interface shown below into a Joomla compatible interface, using Dojo-Bootstrap but I can't see the benefits of using the Joomla 'built-in' frameworks for GUI at all.