[TYPO3-dev] Some feedback on UI from client usage of TYPO3 7.2

[Christian Reiter]

Hello everyone,

Here is some feedback from clients (2 large projects with multiple sites 
and editors) on working with a 7.2 environment.

Perhaps this is interesting for people who have influence on the UI design.

Both projects have been with TYPO3 for a long time (3.6 and 4.1)

This means editors have gotten very used to "things just being this 
way". However it was noticed that 7.2 dares to improve some things that 
were not so logical before - for example moving the user settings away 
from the module list into a"profile" like link at the top which is what 
people are used to from other apps.

This has inspired some of the editors to point out some other things.

First of all, general feedback is good. Almost everyone uses the new 
module list in minimized form because it saves so much space and looks 
much more uncluttered.

This however has raised the awareness for the following issues:

File module: ("Datei" in German)
--------------------------------
You click on a "mountains" icon.
Then "a cloud" scrolls out and you click on that to get the file list.

Feedback:
People keep clicking the mountain and expect the files to open.

It would be preferred behaviour that if an area in the modules list has 
only one entry, that it opens right away (i.e. click mountain, get 
filelist). The interface would also be less cluttered if in the case of 
an area with only one module, only the icon of that module was shown, 
since there is only that choice. - no click-to-scroll-and-click-again

Also people didn't like the cloud. Some editors were confused and 
expected "My files should be the mountain, the cloud should be some 
remote/download/whatever". Of course "Store your files in the cloud" has 
been a selling point for FAL, but the icon presumes that Cloud Storage 
is used as *the default*. This is almost certainly false for the 
majority of installations.

Web> Page Module
----------------
Similar to the above a lot of people are a bit confused by the "black 
page" icon followed by "orange page". When they want to switch back to 
"Page Module" from "List" or "File" they usually click the Black Page, 
wait, and then remember they need to click Orange Page.

Suggestion: Find a different icon for "WEB" that doesn't look exactly 
like what you would expect for "Page".

System and Admin Tools area (System, Adminwerkzeuge)
----------------------------------------------------
The clients of these projects do a lot of stuff themselves and have 
admin accounts. So they see these areas.

The division of modules between System and Admin was always considered 
confusing.

In real life they are probably best divided like this:

a "Red zone" with some "hardcore tools" that in case of error, can kill 
your site in backend and frontend.
Also they can change the executable PHP code base of the site.

* Install Tool (break the Localconfiguration, etc)
* Extension Manager (install incompatible extension)
* Possibly "Configuration"  because there is still option
   "Write value to configuration file" in some areas.

a "Yellow zone" with things that site managers use, but won't totally 
crash your site in case of error.
Also these do not change executable PHP code.

* Access  - you can lock out editors,
   but not stop frontend or kill admin BE login
* Backend users/groups - can't kill FE, question:
   is it even possible to delete all users from here,
   including a currently logged in admin :D)
* Scheduler - Tasks might fail but hopefully not the entire site,
   unless you are running new code for the first time
* Languages (malformed XLF/XML might be a problem)

Then there is a green zone of mostly read-only things that shouldn't 
break stuff:
* Log
* Reports
* Database integrity check (the refindex update might fail to complete 
from the backend, but that shouldn't kill the site. AFAIK it is the only 
thing in this area that *changes* something)

Suggestion: Group these as

"Green" = "Reporting" or "Analysis",
  use a "report" or "status" icon

"Yellow" = "Management"
use a common gear/wrench whatever icon

"Red" =  "Setup" or "Install"
use the "power plug icon" from "System", as you can "pull the plug" of 
your system with this.

"Rocket Ship" icon should go away as no one really knows what it means 
except perhaps that if it points in the wrong direction, you will not go 
to space today.

Best regards,

Christian