Context Menu / Right Click

[Joao Pinto]

I guess that context menu was removed mainly because touschreen devices does not have right click, that's awesome, BUT:

I'm pretty sure most of the times we are doing back-end editing in front of a computer, and I really miss the context menu, i'ts crazy that I need to open 3 sliding panels before being able to delete a document.

two tips:

- Put the DO SOMETHING ELSE button on the editing page, see here: https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D6477565_72762215_711306

- Enable the context menu, I know, it's not cool, it's not nice, will work only for computers, but it saves a lot of time. Touchscreen users can still sue the DO SOMETHING ELSE, but PC users will be able to do it the fastest-not-so-nice way.

[Dan]

Is the 'Do something else' button here to stay?  I kind of thought it was temporary until the UI was more fully considered, but I see it has made it through to Beta.

[Nathan Edminster]

I completely agree.  The right context menu is productive and how we've training our content editors.

I like the ellipsis touch approach, but adding a right context menu for desktop is needed (no reason you can't have the best of both).

[Casey Neehouse]

I agree and posted a feature request that the ellipse have a right-click 'shortcut' to the Do Something else panel.

http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-3120

[Dan Booth]

I agree - right clicking might not be good practise in front-end websites, but it's almost ubiquitous in back-end of web-apps. It's so much more productive and quick. It's nice that it's not a requirement, but don't remove it for "power users".

[Stefan Kip]

Absolutely +1!

Op vrijdag 11 oktober 2013 10:56:31 UTC+2 schreef Joao Pinto:

[Niels Hartvig]

It's there already for power users, ALT+Click will give you the context menu.

And no, it's not ubiquitous in back-end of web-apps, only the legacy
ones living in desktop metaphors. While cheese moving is annoying, the
real solution is to work towards a better *general* UX where the
common used items aren't hidden away in a context menu. It'll take
some time before we get there, but it's important that we primarily
focus on working towards a better user interface rather than sticking
to what we know. Also to ensure that we get a user interface that
works on touch where touching with the right hand doesn't make a
difference :-)

Best,
Niels...

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[Dan Booth]

On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 09:18:47 UTC+1, Niels Hartvig wrote:

And no, it's not ubiquitous in back-end of web-apps, only the legacy
ones living in desktop metaphors.

So Google Drive and Google Mail are legacy apps? Because they both have right-click context menus :)

 

While cheese moving is annoying, the
real solution is to work towards a better *general* UX where the
common used items aren't hidden away in a context menu.

OK, that makes sense - so long as you acknowledge that currently isn't the case. Too many clicks are required to achieve common goals. If you can achieve the same level of productivity without need for a context menu, fine. But any new interface has to be at least as productive as the previous one or else it is failing in a key metric.

 

It'll take
some time before we get there, but it's important that we primarily
focus on working towards a better user interface rather than sticking
to what we know.

A better user interface, absolutely. But when clients are used to a way of working, totally changing that isn't something they often like. Look at the fuss over Windows 8 - power users can adapt, but many "ordinary" folk feel left behind. Changing things too radically can alienate people. Having to retrain and support clients = time = money.

 

Also to ensure that we get a user interface that
works on touch where touching with the right hand doesn't make a
difference :-)

But does it have to be an either / or? What is wrong with tight-click as a shortcut (rather than a necessity)? It might be a "desktop metaphor" but in my experience that is the metaphor that most clients identify with. I wouldn't get too carried away with "tablets are the future" or whatever since content creation is very rare on these devices. They are meant for consumption, not creation. I very much doubt anyone is going to be adding much content via a tablet or a phone as it's just not productive. 

[Dan]

This is an interesting and crucial thread!

My biggest concern personally isn't that things are different - I recognise that devices are changing and the old UI reached the end of its lifespan.  Trying to wrestle the old back-office to work on touch devices clearly was the last straw- it wasn't built for that and needs to change.  The upgrade to a more client-side technology (Angular replacing usercontrols, essentially) I think is a good one, and also being built on Bootstrap should mean that it's simpler to update the UI in future than battling with custom javascript/css etc.  I do feel though that whilst the tech is great, a lot of the tasks seem to be more difficult / less intuitive in Belle than they are in V6.  I've no doubt a lot of this is because it's not finished and some of the design elements and wording aren't clear, but I've honestly struggled a little with the fundamentals so far.  As a practical example, I'm still slightly confused on a fresh install of Belle, how to create a bunch of media items and re-arrange them.  I get there, but it's definitely not obvious.

The new UI is largely for editors, right? so it would be good to compare a list of common editor tasks between V6 and V7 and maybe even get a user-group of non-techy editors (possibly people who have never seen Umbraco so there's no "where's my cheese" bias) together to see how they cope.  This may have been done already and they may prefer the new UI hands-down, in which case that's absolutely fair, but my gut feeling is that this wouldn't be the case at the moment.

Anyhow, these are my two-cents worth as a long-time Umbracian who really cares about this :)

[John Sheppard]

To my mind this is the crux of an important problem. Is touch really
relevant to content editors? Do people that are serious really enter
data via a touch interface? Maybe they do, and although I'm a small
sample size. I don't and never will :)

The follow up problem is then trying to target everyone and no one at
the same time. That's a bad situation to be in. I think win8 is an
example of that...

I don't have any solutions other than to suggest the possibility of
targeting and optimising for the most common environment. What ever that
may be...

John

[Geoff Beaumont]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:18:47 AM UTC+1, Niels Hartvig wrote:

It's there already for power users, ALT+Click will give you the context menu.

Ouch! So instead of simply right clicking on the mouse, Belle now requires us to use two hands and two separate devices? Sorry, but that's terrible UI design - that doesn't in any rational way qualify as a shortcut, and nor is it easily discoverable.
 

Also to ensure that we get a user interface that
works on touch where touching with the right hand doesn't make a
difference :-)

As others have observed, that doesn't preclude providing efficient shortcuts appropriate to the client in use, and treating desktop as a second class citizen is very definitely not the way to go in this case. Neither I nor any of my clients use touch screen devices for serious content entry - minor updates, sure, if the system makes it sufficiently comfortable (and Belle will be a huge step forward for Umbraco in this area), but for anything more touch screen is just too inefficient and we all return to a keyboard/mouse driven device for that.

[Niels Hartvig]

This thread is going a bit out of hand and I think a lot of ghosts is being seen :-)

First; as said many times now, the tree *will* be "pin-able" and will be by *default* if the screen real-estate permits.

Secondly; we're not optimising for touch interfaces, but we would like to support them (specifically tablets, not phones). It's a common mis-understanding that tablets are consumer devices only (I use to think that as well), but that's no longer the case and there's an increasing trend of people "on the road" using a combo of tablet and external keyboard as their "laptop" (we don't all need the power to run Visual Studio). 

Third; when it comes to the context menu, it's important to understand that v7 isn't a skin of v6 and we're deliberately trying to improve and surface tasks that are hidden in the context menu in current versions of Umbraco. An example of this is the new, default create dialog and the list view of items (instead of various date/alphabet folder hacks in the tree). We're not done with improving all areas and will not be done by v7.0.0, but it's important to understand where we're going with this. 

In current versions of Umbraco - and while we've all gotten used to it today and therefore believe it's good UX - all tasks are prioritised equally and hidden away in a right click menu. Whether it's "Create" (by far most common task in Umbraco) or "Manage hostnames" (by far the least used task in Umbraco). This is actually bad UX. To make it even worse, the tasks aren't "discoverable" (even worse UX than the look of an icon) but needs a right-click (even worse UX - a contextual menu is meant as an alternative, short-cut to existing functionality - not as the only place for tasks).

An example of improvements in v7 over v6:

In v7 it takes two clicks in the same window to create new content (the most used task in Umbraco after editing content):

1) Clicking the "..." next to the parent

2) Clicking the type of content you'd like to create, clearly visible with both icon and description

In v6 In current versions, here's the process:
1) Right click parent

2) Left click create

3) Wait for the modal to appear

4) Click dropdown

5) Choose type in the drop down (then the icon and description appear, if it's not the right then re-do)

6) Click the title field

7) Write a title

8) Click ok

I'm happy to listen to the criticism that we're too aggressive in making it harder to access to context menu and to consider re-adding the right-click option. I just hope that I've made the reasoning more clear. Keep the feedback coming, we're listening!

All the best,

Niels...