Mailing List Archive

[Zope-PTK] FYI: Review of current snapshot
This is mainly for Mike, but we are trying to chat in public.

--Paul

PTK Notes

13 Jan 2000

Reviewing last night's snapshot. Some thoughts...

Need an icon.

Name in add list should change from "ZopeOrg Portal" to just
"Portal".

The first page of the Add ZopeOrg Portal should look a lot better,
more like the wizard I have in the mockup. BTW, just to be clear,
I predict that _Guests_ will be creating portals as well as
Manager.

Each page of every wizard should have: the name of the Wizard
(e.g. Add Portal) and the name of the step. This lets people
report problems easier than "on page three of the wizard..."

The second page should have the same look as the mockup.
Obviously we'll need to get around to creating some different
layouts and themes. As for the text on these pages, Mike, I can
write it for you if you'd like. One of the pages should allow an
optional upload of a logo.

Boy, the HTML I wrote for that stupid header bar sucks, doesn't
wrap well when in a frame. Page 3 of the add portal wizard has a
nice look&feel but doesn't look so good in a frame. 'Address'
should be 'Email Address' or 'Email'.

Do you think we need to replace "Next" submit buttons with
graphics?

Can we combine the last two steps and let them create an account
that is also the person the email comes from?

The "Finished!" page should have the:

o public URL

o management URL

o a reminder that they should "log out", which probably means
closing all browser windows :^(

On to the portal page...

Make the home page look like my mockup, the one with all the
sample Zope text. Take all the controls out and put them in the
"Portal Box" (formerly known as the "Member Box") with "Guest" as
the heading. "Log out" (and all the controls below it) shouldn't
appear unless someone is logged in.

Clicking on "Log In" takes me to a page with no title. It should
say something clever like, "Log In" :^) Concerning the last
paragraph, I think the cookies should be by default long-term
cookies that include the password.

I see URLs like "join_form". I think we need to get away from not
having .html in our object ids. I think it just confuses people.
However, it makes it inconvenient to access things from Python
expressions.

The "Become a member" form needs to explain better what is
happening:

o a random password will be assigned

o the person will receive an email with initial login
information

The email that is sent should provide a hyperlink that, when
clicked on, takes them directly to the "Login success" page.
Probably means a URL that passes in the username and password.

The login success page should, if this is the first login, let
people change their password, then explain what they can expect
from the site.

Why does the users see a warning in red about "automatically
generated form" when changing preferences? Also, preferences
should display last login and various roles.

The Undo link doesn't work. :^)

The Portal Box should have "Advanced" as an option, which goes to
homefolder/manage.

Clicking on My Stuff goes to /desktop, but I get the portal home
page. On the home page, "Manage Your Member folder" goes to
/Members/me/Members/Anonymous User/manage. Thus, I don't see a
way to get to the desktop. :^( I'll switch over to the URL on your
box.

I can't really tell, but are the images being cached on the
browser (hope so)?

Jakob Nielssen

When on the desktop, the place for the portal name (beside the
graphic) is taken up by the name of the current document
(e.g. Wizard).

We're not calling them "Formatted Documents", they are just
"Documents".

The textarea for typing in content is WAY too wide! Yikes! I'd
like to see the "wider" and "taller" buttons which grap a
preference that is editable on preferences. Also, people should
be able to choose from the three formats, per the "Member Adds
Document" use case.

The hyperlink between the icon for the document and the text
covers some whitespace in between, which sticks a line out from
under the icon. This happens on NS on Linux, but I believe it
also happens for NS on NT (I've seen it before).

The "first page, last page" navigation should only appear if there
are more desktop items than can appear (ten in each column).

When viewing an item, the Portal Box should say, "Manage Page",
not "Edit this item". There shouldn't be a separate "Manage Page"
that goes to manage_main. Also, looks like the title of the page
takes over the spot for the portal's title.

Editing a page should have "Save" instead of "Commit". Also, how
does one get *out* of editing a page?

The operation to edit a page should have a nicer URL than
"user_edit" :^)

Should every folder have some default items to edit things like
the home page of the folder, the submenu, etc?

Why does "Advanced Mode" show up on the desktop page but not the
Wizard page?

As noted in the PTK Guide, each piece of content (a portal, a
member, a document) should have id, title (optional), and
_description_ (optional).
Re: [Zope-PTK] FYI: Review of current snapshot [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Paul Everitt wrote:

> Need an icon.

Okay, I've made one (a slightly ajar door with a 'Z' on it) and it'll
be in the next snapshot.

> The first page of the Add ZopeOrg Portal should look a lot better,
> more like the wizard I have in the mockup. BTW, just to be clear,
> I predict that _Guests_ will be creating portals as well as
> Manager.

I went and made a nice Wizard object for the Portal Wizard last night,
but I ran into a nasty problem in that means it can't be used. Wizards
are ZClasses. You can tell the ZopeOrgPortal_factory to use it as the add
form, but it will raise an exception because factories try to call the
form, not just redirect to it. ZClasses can't be called yet! I guess the
answer is to have the add form link to the wizard.

> Do you think we need to replace "Next" submit buttons with
> graphics?

I don't think we need to, but it would be a nice touch. A back button
would also be good. I'll put that in when I make the wizards re-runnable
to reconfigure objects.

> Can we combine the last two steps and let them create an account
> that is also the person the email comes from?

Good idea, yes.

> I see URLs like "join_form". I think we need to get away from not
> having .html in our object ids. I think it just confuses people.
> However, it makes it inconvenient to access things from Python
> expressions.

Why do you see the lack of '.html' as a problem? I think renaming
everything to end in '.html' would be a Bad Thing.

- Members won't stick to the convention, it will be inconsistent
Some Members may think they _have_ to use it, causing more confusion

- Many URLs are to a non-template object, these will not have '.html'

- We would be educating our users in the wrong direction

- I think people rarely look at the URL anyway

These are just rationalizations I've come up with. My only real
reason is that I just don't like it. If you can't be swayed let me know,
but it's only fair to warn you that I will complain about it at LEAST
three more times. ;-)

> Why does the users see a warning in red about "automatically
> generated form" when changing preferences? Also, preferences
> should display last login and various roles.

That is meant to be a note to whoever is installing the site. The
form for non-system properties is generated by using the property's id as
the label of the input. This is cheesy, and should be replaced with a
hand-made form with English-labelled fields. I wanted to make it ugly and
scary to encourage the installer to do so.

> Clicking on My Stuff goes to /desktop, but I get the portal home
> page. On the home page, "Manage Your Member folder" goes to
> /Members/me/Members/Anonymous User/manage. Thus, I don't see a
> way to get to the desktop. :^( I'll switch over to the URL on your
> box.

It sounds like you're not actually logged in. Odd. You shouldn't
even get the options while not logged in.

> Jakob Nielssen

What's a Jakob Nielssen?

> The textarea for typing in content is WAY too wide! Yikes! I'd
> like to see the "wider" and "taller" buttons which grap a
> preference that is editable on preferences. Also, people should
> be able to choose from the three formats, per the "Member Adds
> Document" use case.

Heh, I don't know what you're talking about, Paul, it's exactly 80
columns, the _only_ civilized width. You are correct, of course, it
should use the dtpref settings.

> The "first page, last page" navigation should only appear if there
> are more desktop items than can appear (ten in each column).

Those placeholders are there to avoid interface elements (prev page,
next page) from seeming to pop in and out of existance. Like seeing an
unlit lamp on the dash of a car, it lets you know where to look for an
item when it becomes available. Unfortunately, 'first/last page' is
easilly misconstrued as a verb, so I'll ditch them.

> Editing a page should have "Save" instead of "Commit". Also, how
> does one get *out* of editing a page?

While in the edit dialog, the 'Edit this' link changes to 'View
this'. That way you can fairly easily toggle views.

> Should every folder have some default items to edit things like
> the home page of the folder, the submenu, etc?

At the very least, it should have 'title' I think. Though... objects
Members add will have their own titles. Maybe we don't want users to even
know Folders have titles. But, yeah, I should provide access to some sort
of folder knobs.

By setting the "home page" of a folder, you mean to make it serve
something other than index_html by default?

> Why does "Advanced Mode" show up on the desktop page but not the
> Wizard page?

IIRC, Advanced Mode is meant to be context-sensitive. If you do not
have the 'View management screens' permission on the current object, you
do not get the 'Advanced Mode' object. Presently, that link goes to the
management interface of the present folder, I think that's not the
behaviour you had in mind for it. I'll have to fix it.

> As noted in the PTK Guide, each piece of content (a portal, a
> member, a document) should have id, title (optional), and
> _description_ (optional).

Ahh! Right, thanks. I'll put that on the base class.

--
Mike Pelletier email: mike@digicool.com
Mild mannered software developer icq: 7127228
by day, super villain by night. phone: 519-884-2434