[TYPO3-english] TYPO3 CMS 6.0 activate sorting in page module?

[Jigal van Hemert]

Hi,

On 8-12-2012 11:57, JoH asenau wrote:
> Exactly: Drag & drop is nice when you want to move elements between
> columns or for longer distances. In any other case a simple click on a
> sorting icon is much faster and therefor the better choice regarding
> usability and performance.

Reloading the entire page is faster? Besides, dragging can be done with 
the entire title bar and you don't have to look at a small triangle to 
see which button you should use. Most people prefer drag&drop over buttons.
Also if you have to move it more than one position you would need to 
click multiple times, you would have to wait for multiple page reloads. 
Talking about speed...

> While checking 6.x compatibility of Grid Elements I noticed the missing
> icons as well.
> IMHO the "redesign" of the page module is at least questionable.

Every redesign of every website or application in the world has been at 
least questionable. People have a natural tendency to be against change.

On one hand you have people who say that 4.5 is enough and they don't 
need new features, on the other hand there are people who say that TYPO3 
is not getting new features fast enough and we're falling behind 
compared to other CMSs. I guess you simply can't please everybody.

> On the one hand important buttons have been removed (sorting, add CE on
> top of the module etc.)

Add a CE on the top position of a "column"? That button is there. It's 
only visible on mouseover to reduce the amount of information.

> on the other hand buttons have been moved to
> places where they are just wasting space (add CE after another CE),
> which leads to a signifcant change of the overall height of the page
> module forcing the user to scroll down.

That button was there in TemplaVoilà and people liked it. It is far more 
logical than a button in the title bar of a CE to add a new element 
below. The new CE button is now in the location where the new element 
will be placed.

> Not reloading the page module with drag & drop IMHO is questionable as
> well, since you won't notice changes made by other editors early enough.

If you open a page for editing there is a message that another editor 
has started modifying that page. That should trigger you into asking the 
other editor if he's still busy.

Reloading the page after drag&drop is something that nobody does, 
because it causes an interruption in working on that page.

Maybe someone can make something that asks the server periodically for 
updates for the page you're working on and show those changes in the 
page? Then you can see the changes of other editors working on the same 
page.

> Especially when you enable copies with drag & drop you would have to
> create ALL the classes, JS and HTML code for the newly created element
> at the client side and modify the rest of the elements accordingly,
> which is.much more complicated than a simple reload. (Maybe this is the
> reason, why drag & drop currently only works while moving elements?)

Maybe current drag&drop is simply a replacement for the sorting buttons? 
Other implementations of drag&drop for TYPO3 that I've seen don't have a 
drag&drop-copy action.
Besides, it only requires rendering the newly created element. No need 
to "modify the rest of the elements accordingly".

> Currently our plan in the Grid Elements team is, to reenable the "old"
> behaviour with Grid Elements and provide a slightly modified page module
> with less waste of space, more functionality, active sorting buttons,
> completely working drag & drop actions and drag in of new content
> elements. After all we should take care of the needs of the users, which
> seems to be slightly different to the perception of these needs within
> the design team.

And again a commercial break for "Grid elements" :-) It's fine that you 
want to offer an alternative. TemplaVoilà also offers an alternative. 
It's fine that you think you can do a better job, but I don't see the 
need for such a negative description of the default Page module.
Personally I hear from users that they were confused by all the buttons 
(a cluttered interface) and the fact that everything was so close 
together. They want to recognize the content elements (better previews) 
and want to be able to do the basic actions easily (adding new CE, 
moving CE, (un)hide CE).

[... more commercial text ...]

> Maybe we can convince the core team to go this way together with us. :-)

You know very well that the core team tries to make/keep the core as 
light weight as possible and have extra functionality in extensions from 
TER. Yes, there are a number of system extensions which should also be 
moved out of the core and work on that is slowly done; simulatestatic 
was first moved from the core code into a system extension and now 
finally moved to TER. If you want 'speaking URLs' you now have to 
install an extension like RealURL, CoolURI, simulatestatic, ...

This has nothing to do with you or with gridelements. Some people want 
TemplaVoilà in the core, other want a news module in the core, etc.
It should also be noted that being an extension has advantages over 
being part of the core. Updates are easier as an extension, you can add 
features any time

-- 
Jigal van Hemert
TYPO3 Core Team member

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