Hmm, I do like summary, details tabs only, my main goal was to make publishing easier and have it fit on one page.

Community Server has an additonal panel (see attached) for advanced settings, what about having something like this? (Then have the option to have it auto-expanded or not). There are additonal options coming soon, like locking comments at the article level.

Word Press has a simple edit, and an option for advanced editing, which turns the editing into something like you see in the 2nd screenshot from wordpress.

Now, keep in mind they don't require multi-page article/posts, thats why I have that details tab. I had a though today of integrating additional pages as additional tabs, so you would click something like "add page" which would add a tab with a rich text control.

The other question, isshould the publish button (and others) remain at the top, or should it be integrated into the panels?

Interesting options, let me know what you prefer. I would like to keep the summary as clean as possible for the people that just want to write something quick (see simple editing for wordpress and community server), but I would like to do something we all agree, especially since you guys already have a user base for this module.

05.07 is perfect.

Thanks Scott

OK, not exactly perfect. But it does offer a solution for about every camp and for nearly every application.

If you objective was "Quick Publish" you have it with very little clutter as all of the valuable fields are there. Give your article a title, assign a category, enter your text and pop the top Publish button - Done. You never even need to look at the rest of the fields if you don't need them. If you do need the other fields they are there and you have another publish button at the bottom of the page. Having them exposed is a great asset to the casual user, they don't need to hunt for anything, it's all right in front of them.

If your objective is ease of use you have that as well. The only real "complicated" issue on the previous versions was the Add/Edit pages link at the very bottom of the page. Now there is a very intuitive easy to understand interface where you can understand what Summary and Details is really all about.

Moving the date fields, or anything else for that matter to the Details tab would, in my opinion, defeat the quick publish design. Being able to publish quickly should be a consideration regardless of the individual modules specific use case. When used for news and announcements, which I would guess is the primary use of this module by the community with blogs being second, it is very important to have quick access to the publish and expiry dates. It's the one mechanism of any CMS that is very important. It's a vaulable tool used to keep a site filled with fresh content and to keep old content from hanging around. As many articles will never include any details it would be counter productive and confusing to send users to the details tab to access publishing information.

I'll stick with this......

"I think the expandable advanced options might offer the best solution, and if it was configurable from the admin section to be collapsed or expanded by default that would be perfect. Then you could still get by with only two tabs, summary and details which would be very intuitive interface when multi page articles were required. This solution would still offer a very easy publish cycle for those that just want a type and click scenario."

and add to it R ays comments about visibility.

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll be reviewing them later tonight when I add the expanded/unexpanded config option.

I do have one other questions, do you guys prefer buttons? I thought of using logos like mambo uses, but wasn't sure.

I upgraded my largest installation this morning and have started to recieve feedback from some users.

Below is an email that I think sums up the feedback I have received so far.

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Jack,

I can't speak for the load time and I'm confident that is most likely not related to the module, but I do think they have a point on the date selector. Is there a way for me to change the date range? Going back to 1990 is not really a requirement

Posted By jhoelz on 11/10/2005 11:35 AM

I upgraded my largest installation this morning and have started to recieve feedback from some users.

Below is an email that I think sums up the feedback I have received so far.

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Jack,

I have not been adding content for a few weeks. Today I noticed the new format for the news editor. It makes the summary and the page easier to accomplish. It also is more attractive.

However...the page seems to take significantly longer to load. I also preferred the previous publish and expiry date tools. And, what is with an expiry date that goes back in the years instead of forward? Kludgy.

I look forward to working with you to improve our site. I think I have found a web administrator to take my place.

Don

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I can't speak for the load time and I'm confident that is most likely not related to the module, but I do think they have a point on the date selector. Is there a way for me to change the date range? Going back to 1990 is not really a requirement

Thanks for the feedback Jack,

For the date range:-

• It goes back that far, so you could import a whole bunch of articles from previous years, each would have a publish date of a date in the past 2001, July 15 (1990 is a bit extreme so I may change it to be maybe 2000?)
• The date picker got changed because I needed to specify the time, maybe just displaying the normal date picker with the time dropdowns is better?

As for load times, it depends on the editor, you now have 2 instances of the editor on the page, hence a signification load time. I'm not sure how to get around this.

Yes, I'm sure the load times are the editor. For admin accounts I am loading a very full featured r.a.d. editor.

As for the date picker, I personally prefered the calendar style, so that along with drop downs for time would be my choice, but thats just me.

The reason I like the calendar style is because you can see the days of the week, so if you want your announcement or article to expire on a saturday you don't really need to know the date.

Hi Jack,

What made you go for the r.a.d editor ?

I'm considering it as I have users with Macs & Firefox that can't use the DNN standard editor and I'm having all sorts of fun and games with FCKEditor and images.....

Cheers,

Mark

For the reasons you mentioned.

Also see..

http://www.smcculloch.net/Forums/tabid/118/view/topic/forumid/12/postid/1318/Default.aspx