[TYPO3-hci] BE vs FE

[Waldemar Kornewald]

On 8/1/06, JoH <info at cybercraft.de> wrote:
> > But those records in Web>List aren't necessarily shown on the page,
> > either. In those cases where the image/file is hidden you can create a
> > hidden page which acts like a folder. In many cases your file/image
> > will actually appear on some page and it's more intuitive to put
> > related files and pages together. Typo3 has too many separate concepts
> > which could easily be unified. Every new concepts means that you have
> > to learn it. Why don't you try to reduce the number of concepts?
>
> Well - this simply shows that you didn't get the overall concept of TYPO3 at
> all.
> One of the major advantages is that there always are at least 2 (sometimes 3
> or 4) different concepts to choose from.
> This way we can make sure that everybody can find his personal way of doing
> things as comfortably as possible.

There has been lots of usability research on "offering multiple ways
of doing something". It has been shown a long time ago that it's
significantly easier for end-users to have only one way of doing it.

> Something that looks "ridiculously complicated" for you might be the way to
> go for other people with a different mentality.

Very often people just don't want to change their habits and thus
request more features and concepts because they are too lazy to learn
something different even if the other concept is more (or equally)
effective.
Unfortunately, the open-source mentality is to never say "NO" to less
features and always say "YES" to more features. Developers design
software for themselves, not for end-users.

> Some people prefer the "Web->Page" view when editing content, others really
> like the "Web->List" view again others are working with FE editing only. It
> all depends on their personal background and skills.

FE editing is indeed a nice concept and it's totally sufficient to
have one easy to use BE editing concept for complex tasks and a very
simple FE editing mode for simple tasks. But why do we need even more?
That's what plugins are for.

> I've followed this thread for a while now and IMHO it sounds a bit
> overconfident if someone who is just looking for a new CMS but never really
> used it is writing stuff like:
> "Ridiculously complicated" -> How does it come that none of the newbie
> editors I have trained ever complained about this?

I'm sorry that I sound like that. I'm just getting the impression that
the majority of you guys thinks I'm totally stupid with my ideas of a
simpler interface. That's frustrating. Especially, since 99% of the
CMSes violate very basic usability concepts and our project got very
frustrated with trying out >50 CMSes just to realize that nearly all
of them are so complicated that you can't even create a simple web
page...It's not just me who thinks that way.

End-users often don't complain. They just use that software and get
angry if something doesn't work. Mostly tech-savvy people (or geeks)
get in contact with development teams. Why? That's because normal
users don't care about computers so much. They just use them because
they have to. OTOH, for us computers are hobbies. That's why mostly
tech-savvy people post suggestions (which are nearly never indented
for end-users...).

But the main problem with what you say is:
> newbie editors I have trained
Do you think those editor would have been able to do anything without
your training? Somehow this doesn't speak for Typo3's usability.
Once you can train someone you have eliminated a lot of problems. The
point is that the CMS should be usable *without training*.

> "Nobody needs this/that" -> How can you know what others might need?

Scratch the "Nobody". There always is *someone* who needs it.
How do I know that *most* people don't need it?
* I see that the concept is not very simple.
* I tried *lots* of CMSes. I didn't count, but I'm sure I tried at
least 90% of the open-source CMSes.
* If I see that most other (powerful) CMSes have found a simpler way
to solve something then I can be sure that I'm not totally wrong when
I say "Nobody needs that"

Sorry if I sound too confident again. I want to make Typo3 easier to
use and I read that for V4.5 you planned a major overhaul. Now, I'm
here with my suggestions and nobody wants to change *anything*. All I
see is that a few expert-concepts and minor changes are being
discussed. I wouldn't be surprised if V4.5 would look nearly the same
as V4...
So, do you want to change and try out new concepts or should I shut up
because nobody is interested in change, anyway?

> "Separating FE and BE users is a bad concept" -> How can you know if you
> didn't even get what they are for (Website Visitors vs. Website Editors)?

* Visitors and editors are both *users*.

* Nearly all CMSes don't make such a distinction and there are no problems.

* What is the advantage of having them separate? I still haven't seen
a good reason.

* It definitely is more complicated. I hope that there is no doubt about that.

* It is less flexible because as BE user can't login to the FE and FE
users can't be *easily* granted access to the BE (e.g.: because they
joined the development team).

> First thing you should understand: TYPO3 is a CMS - this means Content
> _Management_ System.
> It's definitely no "Online Dreamweaver" and WYSIWYG editing becomes pretty
> useless as soon as you want to manage the same content with different
> layouts or for different mediatypes or in intranet/extranet scenarios.

Please keep my "all WYSIWYG" suggestion out of this. I've understood
that this will be impossible to get through in this CMS. But we can
still simplify the current concept. Even if we keep the "records"
scheme (which give you so much flexibility).

> Compare it to you car's cockpit. Usually it is a black board with a lot of
> different lights behind it, that you can't see as long as you don't turn the
> key. But when you turn the key for the first time, all the different lights
> will flash at least once to show you they are available and working. Imagine
> how surprised you would be if you had to find out by accident, that there is
> a light that shows you are running out of fuel and you don't have to go and
> check the fill level of your tank manually.

Isn't this somewhat far-fetched? These are status indicators and they
don't nag you the whole time while you're driving.

> Same reason for the BE: If you install TYPO3 the first time it offers you
> all the available options. It's up to you to decide if you need them or not
> and if you want to turn off the stuff you find unnecessary.

Referring to your car example: Do you have to manually disable all
those status indicators?

Seriously, do you really think that an end-user who doesn't know the
system can solve a simple task relatively quickly? At least, our team
(even our programmers!!!) can't and I will have to give a quick intro
and write how-tos for even very simple tasks...
As soon as you leave people alone with Typo3 and don't train them the
situation changes radically! You might argument that Typo3 is not
indended for normal users, but don't you agree that there are many
users who only have to create simple textual content and that the UI
should make this as straight-forward as possible, so nobody has to
read how-tos?

BTW, I was not solely talking about removing buttons, but also
unifying concepts.

> You can use an extension for this purpose (I have to admit that this is not
> a real "extension" but more a "modification") or you can simply setup
> different BE views for your BE usergroups.

I will probably setup different views and also install the extension,
but that is just a workaround for the actual problem.

> Since the first login will always be an admin login it seems logical to me
> that you don't get a restricted view. This is something for simple editors
> and it can be acchieved very easily

Okay, there is some truth to it, but would it not be nice to have a
very simple method to create a simplified view for the other users?

> If you are just a simple editor and don't want to see the whole admin stuff
> it doesn't matter anyway since you will have to ask for professional support
> that will setup the "streamlined" BE view for you and do at least the
> necessary templating.

Of course it does the job, but that's not very effective and requires
more work than I'd wish...

> TYPO3 is no out-of-the-box-solution for end users but a framework for
> professionals that will create such a solution for the end users out of it.
> If it is looking too complictaed for you, maybe it's just because you are
> more like an end user who needs the help of such a professional.

We don't have professionals who can help. We're an open-source project
and we want to setup a new website with a powerful CMS (multi-lingual,
ACLs, etc.).

> This is not meant to be offending or questioning your overall programming
> knowledge, just an assessment from a TYPO3 point of view.
> Maybe it will be enough to buy some books to get behind the magic - have a
> look at my signature ;-) - , maybe you should consider paying for some
> training or maybe it will be even better to drop TYPO3 and try to find the
> online-dreamweaver you seem to be looking for.
> It's up to you.

We (the Haiku team) tried nearly everything. You won't believe it, but
it's really hard to find a concept that sticks out and doesn't suck.
Every web developer seems to have basically the same idea of how a CMS
should work. Plone is known for its usability, but hosting is too
expensive. I also found a Flash-based CMS with drag-n-drop and
super-dynamic BE. It's cool, but it's not free and Flash is not an
acceptable requirement. And that's about it. If you want a
professional CMS you get a lot of complexity.

In the end, Typo3 was the only CMS that was acceptable for us.

> BTW: If you want to combine pages and corresponding files/images in just one
> view, feel free to use the media field of the page record and put as many
> files in there as you like.
> You will even get thumbnails of the images there.

Why don't you unify both schemes into one concept? Typo3 already has a
nice List View which could serve as the base.

> Wenn man keine Ahnung hat: Einfach mal Fresse halten!

Warum so aggressiv? :))

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald