[TYPO3-hci] Backend in "Mambo"-Mode

[Christopher]

Fabrizio Branca wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> I agree in what you are saying, but is it the right way to have an ui 
> that needs to be thaught? You're right when you are saying, that editors 
> need good trainers, but isn't there a way to design the ui in a way, 
> that no trainers are needed at all?

Is this a wind-up? You're kidding, right?

> Do you need a trainig for opening doors? No, because it is simple. Just 
> push the doorknob and pull/push the door. A doorknob is an example for a 
> simple intuitive user interface that needs no trainig.

Well, without going too far into the fact that doorknobs provide almost 
_no_ clues whatever about how they are to be used (twist left? right? 
pull? push? slide? squeeze?), the fact is that a _door_ is an 
extraordinarily simple tool.

A CMS is not remotely like a door with respect to the simplicity of the 
tasks to be performed--it is an inherently more complex tool. This 
becomes even more obvious when you consider the amount of _conceptual_ 
background required for even a basic editor to understand what s/he is 
doing when s/he updates a website...

> I'm sure that it won't be as easy to handle websites and managing typo3 
> as opening doors, but those people who have problems with the interface 
> usually don't need all the features of typo3 and don't think of 
> pagetrees, data records and extensions. So my approach was to have 
> different views of the backend.

A good point to be sure, but I have found the page tree to be _THE_ most 
intuitive part of the BE for users I've trained. Record types and 
extensions not appropriate to particular levels of users can and should 
be removed from the BE with access permissions--a process I would love 
to see simplified, by the way.

> A think there must be the way in having a clear and intuitive backend. 
> Restricting the access to what the editors see is one point, but i think 
> there are some more things to be done to create an interface which can 
> be used without trainig.

Without training? Impossible.

With less training? Perhaps, but three hours training has been enough to 
get almost everybody I've ever trained up and running with adding, 
changing and deleting content and FE users. To me this has always seemed 
a surprisingly small amount.

Somebody has already mentioned it in the thread, but I think that a 
major part of the problem here is that users complain about the complex 
interface because developers don't properly restrict access, which is in 
turn because it's difficult and time consuming to do. To me, this 
suggests that the real problem is with how difficult or time-consuming 
it is to _configure_ the BE, and that simplifying this configuration 
process should therefore be a major focus of this group.


-Christopher