One of the things that threw me off when I tried Drupal out years ago was how there was no visual separation between the front end site that visitors saw and the back end site that administrators used. Joomla provided this nicely (though in a dated interface). This visual separation made a lot of sense to me as a new user. There were clearly-defined areas for doing totally different things. This separation gave me confidence as a new user.
However, one aspect of Joomla that still bugs me is the way frontend editing is handled. Frontend editing is a great feature that users (and many inexperienced clients) would much rather use, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen editor boxes and option menus extend beyond (or complete break) a frontend template.
My personal view is that frontend editing should be abstracted completely from the frontend template to a layer “above” the template. I think that through the magic of modal boxes already built into the backend of Joomla, frontend editing can not only become more useful but also more powerful.
I am in no way a UI designer, but I made a few rough sketches of my ideas. Here’s what I propose:
The Super Admin and Admins have the right to turn on or off the Frontend Maintenance Menu (FMM, for lack of a better name) for any level of user. Additionally, menu items in the FMM can be enabled or disabled for a particular user group. If the FMM is enabled for a particular user, the menu will show up collapsed on the left or right side of the screen, unobtrusively and out of the way of the site content.
When it is clicked, it will slide out to reveal the options available to the user. Some handy menu options:
- Content – used for article management.
- Menus – enables easy menu management
- Modules – used for module management
- Template – can be used to harness the preferences power being built into modern templates
Choosing an option will open a modal box above the site. The modal box will serve more as a ‘window’ through which they can perform various administrative functions, rather than a feature that’s shoehorned into the front-end template.
Some advantages of moving in a direction like this:
- There is a consistent view of Joomla frontend functions across all Joomla sites
- Users have a clearly defined place to perform their frontend functions
- Templates can focus on displaying the data instead of displaying ways to manage the data
I’d love to hear some thoughts or feedback on this. Thanks for reading.
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Regards
Gerlof
@Gerlof: Nope, I don't follow them, but I'll check it out. Not sure who to get ideas like this to or how best to submit them to the community.
@Sara: I totally thought of you when I mentioned the editor boxes breaking templates ;)
I am working on a similar summer project for Joomla! to enhance the frontend editing functionality. You can read more about it in the latest blogpost: http://community.joomla.org/bl...e-fly.html
Also, you can comment or give feedback at the thread: http://forum.joomla.org/viewto...1&t=396033
This is pretty similar to my approach as I also intend to use modal boxes.
This is great...
Such a slick & clean way forward.
This would make a lot of my Joomla clients very happy indeed ;-)
I would push this forward with the Joomla dev team/community - I'm sure they couldn't fault it as a route to take.
cheers & well done
Philip
@Philip: Thanks, mate!
Love the idea. I'm actually glad it doesn't follow the Concrete5 / new Drupal model of frontend editing being located at the head of the page.
The only gotcha I see thus far is JS/CSS precedence if you have Uservoice / GetSatisfaction (and any other service which flies out from the left hand side of the page). You'd need some logic to negotiate CSS layer precedence, especially when I think most services force the flyout to be between 1000 and 10000 in the z-index.
I like your theme here very much.
Stuart L
If (userisloggedin) {
echo 'style2.css';
}
else {
echo 'defaultstyle.css';
}
...something like this ... the only thing is that I don't know what argument this conditional could take to make it go.
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