GUI Feedback

[Blake]

First off let me state that I love that you guys are developing
groupware. I have experimented with other types of groupware and none
of them seem to work quite right. Just a suggestion but I think you
guys should focus more on your GUI and organization.

These are just my opinions but please consider them on your next
update.
When the average user logs on i feel that they would be immediately
confused by the layout. I think you should have a different way of
organizing the folders. Not in a folder directory based way. Maybe
icons instead.

Also don't allow general users to see content such as add a icalendar
it is just confusing to users. Only make it so the admin can see it.

[Thomas]

Hello,

> First off let me state that I love that you guys are developing

Great!

> organizing the folders. Not in a folder directory based way. Maybe
> icons instead.

Working with trees and folders is a basic principle most popular tools
share (thunderbird, outlook, evolution, file systems).
If you need different icons for each folder, you can use the "simple
core tree icons" theme or assign icons manually to the folders.

Unneeded folders can be disabled:
http://www.simple-groupware.de/cms/FAQ#DisableFolders

> Also don't allow general users to see content such as add a icalendar

This is not clear, do you mean methods for exporting data or the demo
folder?

bye
Thomas

[paulzarucki]

Hi,

If you require a highly simplified or specialised user interface for a
specific purpose or for a certain group of users then another
possibility is to write a separate web application that shares the
same database as SG, i.e. it uses the tables created by SG. You can
use SG for admin tasks and to provide the database structure. Your own
web application can then be kept very simple and typically needs far
less code than a stand-alone application. An example scenario is for
in-house staff to use SG while your simplified web interface is used
by the public or customers. While not "officially" supported, I have
found this approach to be very effective and it can greatly reduce the
amount of work involved in creating web application.

You may also be able to do some or all of the above using the PmWiki
facility in SG but I have not tried this (I have not taken the time to
understand Smarty Templates).

You can also use the SG database in OpenOffice. It is not too
difficult to connect OpenOffice (and, probably, other office suites)
to the same SQL server assuming you have easy network access to the
server. In OpenOffice you can then do mail merge from the contacts
list, generate reports and so on.

I might have strayed slightly off topic but hopefully these comments
will help someone. When I get time I must write some howtos.

Regards,
Paul.

[Blake]

OK thanks this has been helpful. I have one more question but i will
put it under a different topic.