By hgmichna on

I think it is about time that somebody addressed the few biggies among Drupal's usability problems. They are not many—Drupal is a fine Content Management System—but there are some.

Data loss when editing

I think by far the biggest usability issue is that Drupal doesn't ask when the user is about to lose a huge amount of work. This happens, for example, when the user has entered a long message into the edit window and then, before clicking on the [Submit] button, clicks on some other link by mistake.

Every normal program I know will ask when I'm about to close an edit and lose all entered data. Not so Drupal, which will, in a split second, forget everything the user has typed, no matter how much it was or how long the user worked to type it in.

Unreliable new posts tags

On any busy web site it is very important for the user to be able to find all postings he has not yet seen. Drupal actually has such a function, alas it only works in some circumstances, but not in others.

I guess you all know this problem very well. You find a forum topic, marked for 2 new replies. You click on the "new" link, get to the first, and read it. Now how do you get to the next?

An obvious way would be to go back, find a link to the remaining unread reply, get there and read that too. However, when you do that, you find that it's gone. Drupal has already marked both new replies as read, and you have a slim chance to find the other one.

You could instead scroll through the entire topic to find the other "new" tag. This is already very awkward, but if you're another bit less lucky, it is on another page of a long thread, and you can never find it, because its "new" tag is already gone.

What the user really needs is some "go to next unread message" function.

Drupal is clearly dysfunctional here. It is partly a flaw, but partly also a defect.

I'm sure this has been mentioned or reported before, but it should clearly make it into the top usability issues list.

No WYSIWYG editor

I know, I know, there are add-ons that provide the functionality. But I believe, WYSIWYG is such an important issue that at least a WYSIWYG editor covering the basic HTML functions should make it into the core.

I'll stop here for now. There are a number of big issues for site editors and site designers too, but I wanted to cover the biggest issues for all end users first.

If you know of any further really big usability issue, please comment. But please think twice before you decide that the issue is really big. The criterion for a big issue is that it costs the users a lot of time or causes a lot of aggravation. Any issue that costs the users a little time or a little aggravation is a little problem.

Hans-Georg

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

andreac’s picture

andreac commented

One major example of data loss when editing is the way you expect to be able to flip between tabs when setting up your user profile. If you go to a new tab you expect it will save what's on the current tab. But it doesn't save when you switch tabs, you must hit the Submit button, and you have to go back and re-enter when you realize, yes, you just DID IT AGAIN!

hgmichna’s picture

hgmichna commented

In Internet Explorer 7 I can switch to another browser tab, do something there, then switch back to Drupal and continue to edit in an edit window. My earlier entries are still there, unchanged.

While thinking about the general problem and the involvement of the browser in it, one possible path to a solution could be that Drupal renders all links on an edit page with target="_blank", so when the user inadvertently or unknowingly clicks on any link in that browser window, he gets a new page, and his edit window will remain unchanged.

Even better solutions revolve around being able to save an unfinished entry as a draft and perhaps doing that automatically when the user clicks on a link.

Sourour Al-khatib’s picture

Sourour Al-khatib commented

A more easer approach is a small javascript to detect whether text fileds have entries or not and then show a warring massage for the user when he is leaving the page without submitting or saving changes, reminding him that his changes were not sent.

Hope this helps

hgmichna’s picture

hgmichna commented

If that can be done, I'm all for it. I think this loss of entered text is by far the biggest Drupal usability problem.

Hans-Georg

ratnesh aarohi’s picture

ratnesh aarohi commented

I use TINYMCE as the WYSIWYG editor and it has a AUTOSAVE button (under admin > tinymce> buttons) which gives me a warning if i happen to click on any other button before SUBMITTING.
I guess this is what you all are asking for? Or have i got it wrong? let me know your feedback.

http://drupal.org/project/tinymce

heather’s picture

heather commented

Thank you for your suggestion about improving the usability of Drupal! We look forward to more ideas, sketches and examples.

NB: Note this forum is deprecated. As tempting as it may be, please do not reply to this post.

I have added your suggestion about data loss into an issue queue. The others are duplicates of the other issues you mention elsewhere in the issues queue.
http://drupal.org/node/302789

If you are interested in finding ways to make contributions to Drupal usability, please join the Drupal Group:
http://groups.drupal.org/usability

Screenshots, sketches, research and examples of good practice are all welcome.

This forum has been deprecated, and is no longer supported. As tempting as it may be... please do not post in this forum, or reply to this post.

I am merely trying to trawl through and find good usability suggestions and add them to the issue queue where they can be tracked. Currently, there is no way for drupal.org maintainers to "lock" this forum. This is a stop-gap measure. Thanks for your patience!

kevinhaddock’s picture

kevinhaddock commented

can somebody delete this comment? I can't.