Hi All,

I have a question about Usability Issue "#12 Inconsistent Go Buttons": http://www.elijahlofgren.com/silverstripe/inconsistent-go-buttons/

"Users may get confused as to when they need to click a ‘Go’ button in order to activate a drop down box selection and when they don’t.
R: Try to be consistent in the actions required of users for the same display element."

I looked around the CMS and everywhere else that drop-down is used, no "Go" button is also used in all of these places:
* TinyMCE format drop-down
* Page type drop-down
* Page Version History drop-down (I plan to change this to a checkbox, since it makes more sense)
* Site Reports drop-down

However, I think the one main reason to keep the main button would be to prevent pages from accidentally being added. However, this is not too big of a problem, it's not like pages are getting deleted.

In light of the above, should I remove the 'Go' button from the 'Create' drop-downs in the "Site Content" and "Newsletters" sections?

Thanks for your input,

Elijah Lofgren

I also feel the having 3-clicks for create something is bit tedious and unnecessary. Already dropdown options specifies the action verb such as "Create" and "Add" so it's pretty obvious what is going to happen when you select one of them.

Also, in the 'Files & Images' and 'Security' sections, clicking "Create" immediately adds a new folder or group. So I guess that makes my reason for keeping the "Go" button not really an issue.

Edit: For this reason, I wonder if it would make sense to add Ellipses (...) to the "Create" links in the "Site Content" and "Newsletters" section in order to show that there is more action required in those sections.

Edit 2: Therefore, unless I hear any objections, I'll probably look into removing the "Go" button tomorrow. ;)

Here my thoughts

-- Go button --
Remove it, but add an empty line (or something like "Do nothing") in the drop-down box so if someone changes opinion after having clicked on the box can stop the action that way.

-- Ellipses --
Add ellipses to Create and Delete

Regarding the Reorganise button I'm wondering if it is really needed... it has NO functionality at all, it just shows some information. I think it would be a good idea to either just remove that button and info or show the info by default (maybe at the bottom) and remove the button.
Any unnecessary button makes it just more difficult for new users to use the system.

> -- Go button --
> Remove it, but add an empty line (or something like "Do nothing") in the drop-down box so if someone changes opinion after having clicked on the box can stop the action that way.

Good idea. :)

> -- Ellipses --
> Add ellipses to Create and Delete

I plan to, as shown in the screenshot here: http://www.elijahlofgren.com/silverstripe/create-delete-and-reorganise-links-need-to-be-more-prominent/

> Regarding the Reorganise button I'm wondering if it is really needed... it has NO functionality at all, it just shows some information. I think it would be a good idea to either just remove that button and info or show the info by default (maybe at the bottom) and remove the button.
Any unnecessary button makes it just more difficult for new users to use the system.

Indeed, the only thing that the "Reorganise" button does is enable drag and dropping on the page list (along with showing the message).

Would allowing dragging and dropping be default cause any usability issues? I can't think of any.

If we carried this on, we could get rid of the "Create" and "Delete" buttons as well. We could just show the check boxes by default along with always showing the "Delete the selected pages" button and "Add page" drop-down.

I wonder what would be the most usable. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Would the addition of checkboxes and drag-and-drop by default make the left pane harder to use?

Thanks for your feedback,

Elijah

>> -- Go button --
> Remove it, but add an empty line (or something like "Do nothing") in the drop-down box so if someone changes opinion after having clicked on the box can stop the action that way.

select-actions by javascript without a "go"-button can be confusing: they don't work if the DOM is loaded and the javascript isn't applied to it (in which case you're stuck with the current selection). it's also a major action in the interface, so i'd be explicit about the creation-action - automatic select-triggering is too much "magic" for my taste :) i'd recommend just moving it in the same line to save space.

> Indeed, the only thing that the "Reorganise" button does is enable drag and dropping on the page list (along with showing the message).
Would allowing dragging and dropping be default cause any usability issues? I can't think of any.

hm, perhaps performace issues to apply these behaviours every time the tree is loaded - but from a usabilty-perspective i don't see any issues.

> If we carried this on, we could get rid of the "Create" and "Delete" buttons as well. We could just show the check boxes by default along with always showing the "Delete the selected pages" button and "Add page" drop-down.

The functionality of checkboxes would be a bit ambigous if shown without a prior action ("can i drag multiple pages when i check them?"). it also takes away precious space for page-labels.

> "select-actions by javascript without a "go"-button can be confusing: they don't work if the DOM is loaded and the javascript isn't applied to it (in which case you're stuck with the current selection). it's also a major action in the interface, so i'd be explicit about the creation-action - automatic select-triggering is too much "magic" for my taste :) i'd recommend just moving it in the same line to save space."

Ok. I'll plan on just moving the "Go" button to be on the same line as the page type drop-down. Edit: Done.

I'll also work on [edit: after I receive confirmation] removing the "Reorganize" button and making drag and drop the default.

I will change the "Create" and "Delete" links into "Create..." and "Delete..." buttons. Edit: Done.

== Two questions remain:

Should I add a "Go" button to the "Reports" drop-down in the left frame in order to make the it consistent with the "Add Page" drop-down?

Edit: I'll plan on changing the links into buttons, but until I get confirmation that it is a good idea, I won't remove the 'Reorder' button. If the 'Reorder' button were removed, where should we put the instructions "To reorganise your site, drag the pages around as desired."?

Re the "reorder" button, there are some usability issues with removing it and just letting users drag the pages in the same way they would if dragging files around using windows explorer as proposed,

This was the first approach we took to moving pages and what we found is many people who were not particularly confident with their mouse, inadvertently moved pages around when trying to do other things such as open pages.

I do however think the current reorder functionality can be improved significantly. Some ways I think we can do this;

1) Currently pages are moved on the draft site as soon as you have moved them in the CMS. I think it would be better if you needed to "confirm" the move after you have moved them, in the same way you need to use the confirm that the pages you have selected in delete", are in fact to be deleted by clicking on the "delete selected pages" button. To do this we could introduce a "confirm move" button.

2) Supplementing this, we could then have a "undo move" button, to undo the changes.

3) Another usability enchantment here would be when you move the page, you would be promoted "would you like to change the location of these pages on the live site as well as the draft site". I find it annoying that after you have moved all the pages, you need to go through the site and and click on all the pages you have moved, and seperattly publish them. This is partially difficult when you can't remember which pages you moved, as currently there is no way to compare the position of pages in the draft and live sites.

We would need to be careful here that this publish operation only "publishes" the change of location to the live site - excluding any other changes which may be sitting in the draft site for the affected pages.

4) We can make things easier, for people moving pages by increasing the space (padding) between all the nodes when in drag mode. I've noticed several people (myself included...) struggle to move pages up or down as it's hard to put pages in the right "drop zone" (currently the drop zone is about 2-3 pixels which is too small for many people). By increasing the padding, we can make the drop zones much larger, which will make moving pages much easier.

Thoughts?