Stuff and Content

Following on from yesterdays post on checking out the eZ Admin Interface prototype I've created an extension that can be easily downloaded, installed and enabled. Download the extension from here Copy to your extension directory and untar: tar xzf admin2prototype.tgz Enable it in your admin siteaccess by editing settings/siteaccess/site_admin/site.ini.append.php and adding: [ExtensionSettings] ActiveAccessExtensions[]=admin2prototype Clear the cache To disable, simply remove the settings from step 3 above and clear the cache. Note: If you enable the extension via the admin interface (Setup -> Extensions) this will effect all site accesses including your front end ones.  Things to check out in the prototype: Lack of Shop and Design tabs - these are disabled by default in eZ Publish 4.3 Hidden right menu. Click on the [+] to expand Content menu (Left Hand side under Content, Users & Media Tabs) can be variably sized. Grab the bottom right hand corner an...

The Admin Interface Refresh project has had a concept implemented that can be reviewed live with an eZ Publish install. This is a guide on how to get things working. The new Admin Interface design is a prototype and it's constantly being refined so don't try this on your production servers. Starting from a clean install of eZ Publish 4.2 with the the eZ Flow package (with content) Change into the design directory # cd design Checkout the design # svn co http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/design/admin2 Edit settings/siteaccess/admin_site/site.ini.append.php and change the SiteDesign to admin2 [DesignSettings] SiteDesign=admin2 Grab new menu.ini - this is required to display the left hand menus under Setup and My account. # cd settings/siteaccess/ admin_site / # wget http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/settings/menu.ini Clear the cache You should now be able to view the new interface and it should look something like this: To revert back to the original inter...

The eZ Publish winter conference is a free conference being held in Geneva on 21 st and 22 nd of January 2010, with the Community Day being held on the 22 nd . If you are like me and can't make it there is some exciting news! eZ Publish's Community Manager Nicolas Pastorino has setup a Ustream account for the eZ Community and scheduled a event for the community day. That's right the Community Day will be streamed live! Show your support of this wonderful initiative by signing up to Ustream and RSVPing to the event ! (Note that two events for they day one for the morning session and another for the afternoon one.) The Ustream interface allows for a twitter channel as well as inline chat allowing participation throughout the day.  The twitter hastag is #ezwintercf . If you know anyone interested in eZ Publish get them to RSVP as well.  It will be great to have as many people as possible participating ! If you have any experience producing an live event like...

I've covered two larger topics in other blog posts ( Admin interface users & Dashboards ) so in this post I'm going to cover a number of smaller suggestions I have for the Admin Interface refresh.  Some of the items have been suggested by others and been added to the specification - I hope I've noted these. Improve underlying HTML Damien has already mentioned linking labels with their related input via the for attribute.  I wasn't aware that there was already an issue for this but I made a start of adding a Accessibility & Usability Improvements project that currently " associates labels with specific form elements, adds "required" class to required input elements to allow attachment of javascript validation ". The project looked at "fixing" the datatype edit templates and the modifications can be viewed in the CHANGELOG . Specific changes I'd like to see in the underlying HTML are: Labels linked to input fields Lab...

In the preface to the current Admin interface specification the last paragraph caught my eye: A overview of user task need a dashboard , where she can follow here own content, approval and other tasks she might do on a regular basis. I recently saw a demo of the latest version of the bug tracking system JIRA 4.0 by Atlassian . It used an OpenSocial dashboard to allow users to customise their homepage to access and interact with information that was important to them.  The system not only displays JIRA widgets but any OpenSocial widgets (and those from other Atlassian products ). You can check out a video of it in action here and more information on how Atlassian is using OpenSocial here . What is OpenSocial? From the official site: OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Google personal home page is an example o...

It's been a while since I first posted about the Admin interface redesign that will be part of the eZ Publish 4.3 (due 30 March 2010).  Since that time there have been some great input ( here , here , & here ) from the eZ Publish community as well as a transparent and inclusive design process from eZ Publish. I'd like to congratulate eZ Systems on their approach with this process and encourage any eZ Publish users to have a look at the specification and the prototype of proposed layout changes and add their voice to the process by commenting on the blog post . In moving forward with any changes I believe that it's important to understand the users of the system and the tasks they are attempting to carry out. This allows for suggestions and potential changes to be "tested" against a rule of "How does this help [ROLE] complete task [TASK] ?" In my experience users of the Admin interface can be split into two broad groups: Content editors , ...