Great release Scott! I love the new features.

I have received some feedback and much of it has been very positive. The one issue everyone seems to have an issue with however is the addition of the "Publish" tab. As most articles consist of a summary only they would prefer to have the publish and expiry dates selectable right from the get go instead of having to select another tab. This would keep the cration process for most articles at a single click of "Publish"

I have modified my own usSubmittNews.asck file to move the date selection to the Summary page. You can find a sample of it here. I'm interested in hearing some feedback from others about this issue.

Are my users making much ado about nothing?

Hi Jack, I agree, I can move it for next release if people are interested.

Here are some other questions:-

"Why not default the expiration date?"

I thought you could maybe use the MaxArticles option, I could add a option to add a default expiration.

"why doe the dates in the expiration go so far back and why don't they go in descending order?"

If people are importing articles. What is not in descending order? (The current article list or dates?)

"Seems frozen.  But I like the concept of the single summary page for most articles being as you suggested."

I may move publish to the first screen if there is enough community support, thats an easy change.

"Where';s the approve article checkbox in the summary?"

You now have the option to publish/unpublish an article and approve/reject if it requires approval. I was trying to achieve 1-Click publish.

Thanks for the reply Scott.

If you want to achieve "1 click" publish, then you must move the date selection to the summary page

No problems, I'll move it overnight, (the same time I move in a lot of additional tokens to the templates).

What should the ordering be?

1. Title
2. Categories
3. Publish Date
4. Expiry Date
5. Summary

I'm not convinced that the date selection at the top is the right place.

Where does everyone thing it should be, above the text box or below it?

Hey Scott - great update & thanks for getting it out this week !

Add me to the list for the publish date move - top of the page is probably best but I don't really have a strong preference.

One thing I've notice is that each page in Create Article has the text 'Once complete, you can save your article via the buttons below the form' - trouble is the buttons are above the form :-)

I've got a question about the New Category module but I'll post that separately...

Cheers,

Mark

I would definitely vote against the move - if the majority really does not use another publish date than the current it good the way it is.

I really like the much cleaner interface now with only the summary and the title on the first tab! Great work!

The expiry date MUST be on the Summary tab.

Another Question, what about the old date picker on the summary tab and the new larger more detailed picker on the publish page?

I have given hundreds of presentations on using DNN with various modules and I can tell you that in each one of those the thing that really brings 'em to their feet is the ability to schedule content. That includes both publish and expiry dates. Separating them IMHO would be a mistake. The feedback I have received to date from many is that the move to another location is also not wanted. Ease of use is what’s asked for the most. The majority of my users are not techies or "clickers". They don't like to poke around to find what they are looking for; they want it right in front of them. I don't think they are unique to the average user.

Of my hundreds of users I can tell you that a significant portion of them that use the news articles module also use the "Featured" feature to float the important stuff to the top. Because that is a single line with a single check box it does not really provide any clutter to the summary page.

The features from the last release that everyone really likes is the ability to add "Details" without understanding the add page issue. The entire "Save - Publish - Add/Edit" section is also well thought of.

To keep things in their simplest form all of the specific items for a given article should be available from the summary page. This is where the user would expect to define the article properties. When creating an article the first place you go should be the area where those properties should be defined defined.

The way I look at this is from the lowest common denominator, and that’s the user that adds articles on an infrequent basis. For that user to effectively use the module they need to see all of the important options in a single place.

Those options I believe are in the following order:

1.       Title

2.       Categories

3.       Summary

4.       Publish & Expiry Dates

5.       Featured

6.       Image

7.       Link-To

All of those should appear on the same page or tab. Having the details separate is fine because that is another "part" of the current article.

Another issue with the multiple tabs is that two of them have the editor and the others do not. This takes away from the GUI. Depending on your editor settings everything gets rearranged on pages without the editor. Alignment, tab location, everything, all based on the width settings of the editor and how it fits with your site theme.

Scott, I hate to bring this all up because I know you worked very hard on implementing all of this stuff, but I also can't ignore the feedback from the people who feed my family, and to date they would prefer I stay with the old interface where they could go to a single "page" and create an article or announcement or blog or whatever.

In closing, based on the feedback I have received I believe people would prefer the following layout:

There should only be 2 tabs, Summary and Details. The "Summary" tab should contain everything it did before, all 7 items above and the details tab should be what it is now, with a single exception. The caption above the text editor on the details tab still reads "Summary".

Thanks