[cheesypoof]

Please see viewtopic.php?p=14932#p14932 for an important update!

Hi everybody, I'm excited to announce that a couple months ago I joined the CouchCMS team!

My first major contribution to this already great software will be a redesign of the admin panel. I will work to improve the usability of the admin interface on all types of devices and screen sizes.

Some of the features and changes include:

• fluid responsive layout
• everything is vector: CSS, SVG, @font-face (High-DPI/Retina compatibility)
• fixed full-height sidebar (sticks to the left side of your window) - degrades to single column for smaller viewports
• sidebar is collapsible if you want additional space
• tabs for quicker navigation and more efficient grouping of editable regions
• keyboard shortcuts for common actions:
  
  • ?: Show keyboard shortcuts
  • Ctrl/Cmd + S: Save changes
  • C + `: Toggle sidebar/menu
  • C + N: Add new entry (page/folder/user)
  • C + V: View entry (page/comment/draft)
  • C + .: Go to next page (if available)
  • C + ,: Go to previous page (if available)
  • C + Tab: Switch to next tab (will loop around)
  • C + Shift + Tab: Switch to previous tab (will loop around)
• customizable template font icons (Font Awesome)
• independent collapsible groups with a definable starting state
• NicEdit appearance revamped
• improved list view select functionality
• un-saved content warning
• template search
• additional bulk actions
• helpful tooltips
• view per page (limit) dropdown

I will also be migrating the admin JavaScript from MooTools to jQuery.

I would like your feedback on this redesign and any other aspect of the admin panel that you think can be improved. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this thread please leave discussions of feature requests for the appropriate forum section.

Just popped in to the forum for one of my regular strolls around ... and noticed that @cheesypoof had gone green! Now I know why. This is great news for Couch ... I'm really pleased - well done.

Really interested in your Admin panel redesign. I am just working on my first responsive site (using Bootstrap) - up till now clients haven't wanted one - but now I have my chance. It's a new way of thinking and requires letting go of the pixel-based-layout-mindset. I wonder when your new design will be ready? Sounds like you have a way to go?

[cheesypoof]

I probably won't complete the HTML/CSS mockups for at least a couple more months because of other commitments. I'm not sure how the timing will coincide with that of the next Couch release, so I'll have to discuss this further with @KK.

For responsive layouts I am partial to the following:

Code: Select all

* {-moz-box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; box-sizing: border-box;}

Congrats cheesypoof!

This is excellent news on the amdin panel, no offence to KK but it's looking a little tired. Your responsive theme was a great step and provided some needed improvements to things like "repeatable" tables.

I'd love to see the new panel maintain simplicity but look take a leaf from things like gathercontent.com

It would be great to throw out the "accordions" for "groups" and move towards "Tabs (Twitter Bootsrap)" or "Sections (in Foundation) - I just personally find accordions easy to be missed by a client (i.e. they don't notice them immediately and realise there's stuff in them).

Maybe accordions are still important for certain content groups etc but wouldn't it be cool to be able to define the option like:

<cms editable type='group' style='tab' />
or
<cms editable type='group' style='accordion' />

[cheesypoof]

I agree with what you said in regards to tabs. They are more efficient at grouping content than the current method with groups. I'll look into this further.

[KK]

I second Patrick's suggestion about the tabs.

There is one problem, though, that this approach could have - upon saving a page if some of the fields have validation errors and these fields happen to be situated within different tabs, we'll have to think of something to make it clear to the user as to which tab to go to. Maybe, coloring the tab-head differently would be helpful?

Anyways, I think this thread seems to be just apt for fellow Couchers to chip in with their suggestions about the admin-panel. So if you have something that you'd like to see in the new admin-panel please share your thoughts here

Thanks.

KK - true, in which case your suggestions would be good (highlighting the tab) along with a flash message at the top of the page.

You could perform jQuery validation on click request to change tabs, obviously this means validation is done before form submission so not sure if certain aspects of the current validation would work?

Hmmm, that awesome news.
For now I think few things would be great:

- custom admin colors (for login and admin section) *
- personal css for admin *
- custom icon adding for templates *
- button for autorefresh templates. For now every change in .php files need to login to admin, view site and back to admin. Too much clicks. *
- better view of table in repeatable regions.
For now I have really mess:

- better fileuploader
- Maintenance mode like custom .html


* enabled in config because I don't want to change that by my clients for they own hand.
In next few days I will create some simple mockups

[cheesypoof]

Any accent colors will be separated out in the CSS file; you will be free to change this. The autorefresh button is an interesting idea for super admin users. It could theoretically be implemented in the admin panel with JavaScript alone. I'll give it some thought. Repeatable regions tables are always going to be a tricky matter, especially with as many fields as in your screenshot. I will try to improve the usability of the table, but ultimately we only have so much screen width to work with... Perhaps with that many fields it would be best to create a new template and use page relationships instead...

Delighted to see what's in the pipeline for Couch! Looking forward to see the best CMS rejuvenated. Keep up the good work and thanks!