[TYPO3-hci] BE vs FE

[Johannes Reichardt]

Hi there,

why don´t you put these suggestions on the typo3 wiki pages? There it 
won´t get lost and can quickly be read for the development of typo3 - 
also it can be *fixed* there.

http://wiki.typo3.org

- Johannes
> Hi Christopher and Michael,
> I was mentioning "*simple* every-day tasks" multiple times and you
> reply to my MS Office example with "users don't use all
> functionality". Here we agree, but we're talking about different
> things. What I wanted to say is that trial-and-error works for simple
> use-cases and most end-users only need those simple use-cases.
>
> Could we please start anew and you just forget my other suggestions. I
> doubt that you will accept any of my suggestions because you always
> remember my too radical suggestions.
>
> On 8/2/06, Christopher <bedlamhotelnospam at gnospammail.com> wrote:
>   
>> There is nothing about the BE/FE distinction _per se_ that prevents the
>> development of community sites as you keep claiming--I'm sure you've
>> misunderstood what people have been saying.
>>     
>
> I just prefer if this is possible out-of-the-box. Customizations are
> very time-consuming.
>
>   
>> Forgive me for making the assumption, but I can't believe, given what
>> you keep insisting about training, that you have much experience with
>> end-users. We use many different CMS products on client websites
>> (according to their needs and requests), and we /know/, from long
>> experience that /all clients need CMS training/. This is true for
>> Mambo/Joomla, Drupal, Plone, Xaraya, some fairly ugly proprietary
>> systems we've been forced to work with /and/ it's true for TYPO3. In my
>> experience, clients have better luck solving their own problems with the
>> relatively consistent TYPO3 BE than they do with any of these other
>> products. In all honesty, I suspect it's because TYPO3 has one of the
>> more well thought out concepts: Site contains pages, pages contain
>> content elements etc.
>>     
>
> I agree that TYPO3 has the better concept when compared to Mambo,
> Drupal, and Xaraya (otherwise we'd be using those systems).
>
> You seem to misunderstand me. I think that the UI could be more
> intuitive, so newbies can do *simple* (!) tasks without training. At
> least our users don't have to do any advanced stuff: creating
> text+image pages, uploading files, posting news and blog items.
> Anything else is reserved for the site admins.
>
>   
>> In any case, the point is, in answer to a question of yours elsewhere in
>> this thread, that I don't believe in the possibility of a product
>> useable without training, even for the basics, because I have never seen
>> /any/ CMS tool--or /any/ software--that even approaches this paradigm.
>>     
>
> In your opinion Plone is not approaching it? I mean, creating a news
> item is as easy as clicking "Add" -> "News Item". Creating a page is
> as easy as clicking "Add" -> "Page". Plone isn't perfect, but it does
> make very basic tasks doable without training. Esp. because the
> buttons (including their placement) are self-explanatory.
>
>   
>> As far as a trial and error approach is concerned, I think if you were
>> given a /properly configured/ BE to play with, you'd find you were able
>> to create pages and contents in about 15 minutes.
>>     
>
> Right, but why is the BE not properly configured, by default?
>
>   
>> And with respect to MS products, surely you don't really believe that
>> anybody uses any tiny fraction of Excel's capabilities without training?
>> I'd be willing to bet that the single most common use of Excel by
>> untrained persons is as a /database/. Certainly hardly anyone uses Excel
>> in any remotely effective way without fairly detailed training.
>>     
>
> Like I said above, I talked about *simple* (!) tasks. Anything beyond
> that of course requires some kind of training/learning. The point is
> that for many users there is *no need* for more.
>
>   
>> TYPO3 is a framework targeted at /developers/ and their /clients/.
>>     
>
> Maybe that's the problem with my previous suggestions. So, what about
> me only making suggestions about how to improve the interface without
> doing any radical changes? Andreas Balzar already posted a nice mockup
> for a new BE which wouldn't introduce too radical changes, but still
> make everything more intuitive.
> Or, what do you think about the problem that the left column in the BE
> affects the right column (instead of the middle column)? Shouldn't
> those page buttons be converted to tabs and moved to the right column?
>
>   
>> For the needs of developers...well you've already noticed TYPO3's
>> millions of options. These are a) present, and b) enabled by default
>> because /it is not possible--or at least it's anything but easy--to come
>> up with a less general solution to the problem/.
>>     
>
> Okay, let's skip the problem of finding a new solution and just
> concentrate on the problems of the current UI. What do you think about
> my other suggestions? Can we talk about that?
> And which is the official place to collect those suggestions? I found
> a few wiki pages but I wasn't sure if that is the right place because
> they didn't list a lot of entries.
>
> Bye,
> Waldemar Kornewald
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