O.K. Greg, here we go...
Starting an analysis of the screens and posting simple Mockups for improvement. This is only Part 1.
One UI issue struck me immediately when installing Pathauto for D6: I bloody could not find the settings form anymore. Just logigal guessing took me to the aliases page, where a new tab "Automatic Aliases was found" and displayed the common settings I knew from D5. Suggestion: put a link to this page somewhere. Users who install this module and don't read Documentation (where you sure informed about this change, I guess) are lost. Either a link in the "settings" section should be included, or something that can be triggered by the "by module" page so there was a "Settings" on this page which isn't now... (attached Screenshot 1, by-module-page.png)
Next concerns the punctuation settings. The page is unnecessary long, due to simple vertical sequence of all characters that can be deleted or changed. There is lots of unused space. As I hate unnecessary scrolling, a quick and easy fix would be, to show the characters in at least two panes (Screenshot 2, punctuation-1.jpg). As this is neither beautiful and may be a bit confusing, I'll refine that. In the end even three columns coud be fitted in without pain.
But what to do about scannability and easy findability of your desired character? Well, this does not need more than a bit of css. Just magnify the characters and highlight them by a bit of border and background. (Attachment highlight-characters.jpg) I am not content with this, will provide a better layout for this. As well will be working for a nice layout for the entire page. See if three columns fit in easily. As the dropdown fields are quite heavy optically, but instead the characters should be empasized, let's see what can be done by styling the dropdown fields a bit.
To be continued.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #5 | ui-punctuation-2.jpg | 7.37 KB | eigentor |
| #2 | pathauto-node-path-settings-original.png | 19.52 KB | eigentor |
| #2 | pathauto-node-path-settings.png | 17.2 KB | eigentor |
| highlight-characters.jpg | 10.25 KB | eigentor | |
| punctuation-1.jpg | 123.71 KB | eigentor |
Comments
Comment #1
asd123asd5 commentedI'd say it is pretty important at least to have a link to the settings in the by module page.
Comment #2
eigentor commentedO.K., finally got to work on it a tiny little bit again.
Am still thinking about how to make this enormous amount of input fields more scannable on one glance. Still Pathauto won't suffer as many UI problems as other modules because the serial construction is easy to grasp for the user. Just Alphabetical, here you go.
So I started with small things, to improve Scannability on the Node path settings fieldset. The problem at the moment to me is there is a lot of optical noise by repeated words that are not needed. What you look for is the content type, but what you always get first is "Pattern for all ... ".
So I simply changed this, cut the rest down to "path pattern" which gets at the end and gets small and grey like a classical description text.
Also added a pathauto.css file to enable style settings (maybe not needed, but for now...)
Can create a patch, but did not now, I would like to know how you like it, and if it improves Scannability. Tagged as Usability needs review and Usability, maybe someone of the Usability Guys has a look.
The entire thing is no big deal, but compare it to the Original (second screenshot)
Comment #3
greggles@eigentor - this is great stuff.
Starting with your original ideas - the fact that pathauto is not on the "by modules" page is something we can't control (see #333240: Add link to configuration page to help text).
I like the idea of double columns on the punctuation, but I think even more than that I like the idea of taking actions by default and hiding the controls for those punctuation settings away in an "Advanced string processing" module that is separate from Pathauto.
On your last comment - there is an idea in #273104: Using "progressive disclosure" for alias patterns to use "progressive disclosure" so that there are many fewer boxes on that page in the first place. I think that your suggestion here will help as well, but is something to consider after we do the progressive disclosure.
Also, if this happens it will have to be in 6.x-2.x because 6.x-1.x is string frozen.
Comment #4
eigentor commentedAh, yes. Hehe, have to keep closer track of actual development and patches to the module.
So people are actually taking care of the visual clutter - this is good. In what way it happens, does not matter in the end... :)
So the advanced String processing module is still to be built? Get back to me when it comes to banging on the formatting of the config page :)
Comment #5
eigentor commentedIf you want tu use the first idea for that modules UI, i improved opon it a bit (maybe the size of the characters gets a little bit out of hand :) ) See attached Screenshot
Comment #6
dave reidComment #7
yoroy commentedComment #8
mably commented