[TYPO3-hci] new skin

[JoH]

> Have you ever seen his skin? If yes, then i think you would think
> about totally different. The skin he has done is much more easy to
> use than the current one. The options you need are placed in
> positions you actually guess where they are. I have posted a mockup
> in the focus on editor thread here in the mailinglist.

Yes, I have seen it. Even seen it in action in one of Kasper'S podcasts.
It's cool, it's fancy, it's - well - let's call it colorful, but I don't
think that it will improve overall usability.
It seems that many people are mistaking a modern look and fancy JS dropdowns
for improved usability but in fact it's just the contrary.

Some of you might be old enough to remember the good old times where we had
things like Word Perfect for DOS.
I guess most of you would not say that WP had got a modern look, but it's
still one of the best interfaces I have ever worked with, even though it had
no GUI at all.
No clicking, no dragging and dropping, just a set of Keyboard Shortcuts that
were easy to learn even for the non experienced secretary.

If you want to create a really intuitive GUI maybe you should take a step
back and try to have a look from another point of view.
Maybe it could be a good idea to look at such a GUI like a gamedesigner
would do.
Imagine you have to create something that will help the player to survive in
a very complex ego shooter game.
You have to be fast so you don't have the time to move your mouse to the top
of the screen each time you want to use another function if you don't want
those aliens shoot your head down.
All the important stuff should be available just by pressing the appropriate
key.
And of course the layout of those keys should be manually adjustable.

Imagine a scenario like this:

CTRL+ALT+T => You activate the container of the page tree
Arrows up/down bring you to the desired page
CTRL+ALT+E => You edit the page header
CTRL+ALT +S => Save it

CTRL+ALT+C => jump to the content elements of the page
Arrow keys up/down/left/right bring you to the desired column/element
CTRL+ALT+E => You edit the "active" element
CTRL+ALT+S => Save it

No klicks, no mouse to move, just simple shortcuts.

During my time as an instructor for media designers we did something special
to have those "mouseclickers" use shortcuts.
We removed the mouse completely and left them alone with a keyboard and a
screen.
After some days without the mouse we reinstalled it and guess what: They
still used the shortcuts wherever they could.
The gain of time was enormous and today they don't want to miss them
anymore.

So please kick these DHTML menus and introduce something that will really
improve usability: Shortcuts

Joey

-- 
Wenn man keine Ahnung hat: Einfach mal Fresse halten!
(If you have no clues: simply shut your knob sometimes!)
Dieter Nuhr, German comedian
openBC: http://www.cybercraft.de