Very nice job guys.  Overall I really like it although I do agree with a few of the posters about the publish page.  I’m not sure I’m too fond of it not all being on one page, although I’ll wait to reserve my full judgement until I actually use it.  I really like the layout of the rest of the CP.

Rick Ellis - 24 June 2005 07:17 PM

If you’re curious to see what the 1.3 control panel looks like, here’s a preview.

The new 1.3 Control Panel looks sweet!  You rock Rick!

** Forgive me Rick, as this would probably take a whole day for you to code, and I’m sure you have other stuff to work on, but. . .

Perhaps there is a need for 2 publish/edit page tempates, Rick’s new design might be the default template, because it makes sense that alot of users never need most of that stuff under the tabs, and a ‘Classic’ template with all the bells and whistles available (as set for that weblog) on the right of the page for those of us who do a lot of cut-and-paste publishing (like when we’re moving an old static website into the EE database, and don’t really want to click all those tabs).

The ‘Clasic’ templates wouldn’t have the dropdowns, just show the options as the old publish/edit page does.

I would need to click all those tabs twice each per entry (once to set options, then once to double check before preview) when adding new content to an empty site. Think 80 entries times five tabs times two clicks and that’s an extra 800 clicks to get moved into a new site.

Perhaps the two publish/edit page templets could be selected by each member in the member area, with a default setting somewhere in general settings?

Rick’s new design would be a cool thing for blog authors that don’t mess with that stuff much, but for my clients that use this for a CMS, the older publish/edit page layout would be a nice thing to still have access to.

I work on a wide-screen most of the time and actually like haveing stuff on the side, but when I’m on my lap-top, Rick’s new layout would be a real space saver.

This way he could easily meet the needs of both audiences for EE, the Blogers, and us CMS folks.

Perhaps there is a need for 2 publish/edit page tempates

One option…even though I haven’t tried it in the 1.3 beta to see what’s changed if anything…is to create your own Stand Alone Publish page with all the options you want. I’ve done that for my site in 1.2 and very rarely ever even hit the CP for publishing tasks anymore. I have pages for me with everything and pages for others that either don’t include some stuff or hide it with preset data.

And the third option is to utilize the Metaweblog API.  I use MarsEdit for some of my posting. =)

PXLated: That’s an option I don’t think I want to need. Some of my clients have a different edit/publish page for each weblog, and some may soon have as many as 15 webelogs. I’m already having to set up a set of custom site fields for each of these, I don’t want to have to assemble another fifteen custom entry pages too. I’m currently coaching webmasters running 16 EE sites, and I expect that to double by the end of the year. The last thing I want in the mix is more custom pages. If it were for me, sure, but I need fast CMS development turnaround with my business model.

LisaJill: I’m not that familiar with MarsEdit (I looked at their website and it looks cool) or the Metaweblog API. Would they auto adjust to a different set of custom site fields for each weblog like the publish page does?

An example would be a bilingual site I support. Each weblog in the site has custom site fields for Title, Body, Extended Text, photo one, photo two, photo captions. . etc. in both Spanish and English. Do these API tools support this sort of thing out-of-the box? Or do you have to customize them also?

Just wanted to take a moment and say that the new ability to add custom tabs to the control panel is simply wonderful. I hop in and out of several modules regularly so having them right on the list of tabs is fantastic.

Nice work overall, but I’m not too happy with the Publish panel. Extra, unnecessary clicks just to get a story posted… Date, Categories and Options should be one. Was there something wrong with the old Publish panel? On iPodlounge.com, getting news, reviews, and articles posted in a fast, efficient manner is important to our bottomline.

OOh, I love how it has spell check! I’ve always wanted that. Awesome!

Except I can’t find anywhere to switch the country for the spelling. Not everyone uses American spelling, and I will not be too impressed if American spelling is the only spell check that it does. For example, American’s spell colour “color”, while the rest of the world spells it “colour”. So, yeah. I do hope that we’re able to choose which form of spell check we want.

Some of my clients have a different edit/publish page for each weblog

Since you’re not using a Stand Alone Entry Form, this must be in the CP. What types of differences are there, generically?

The last thing I want in the mix is more custom pages.

I can understand that…but you may not have to (depending on the above), I don’t. I created a set of templates with different things included…
publish1…Has all the same things as a fully loaded CP Publish page.
publish2…Has all of the above but no url_title field for them to mess in.
publish3…Has all of #1 but no File Upload button.
publish4…Etc.
Once you have #1 built, the rest are just deleting certain things (30 seconds). And it can be styled/layed out just like the CP version if one wants so it’s generic for any customer. So, I’m not creating anything special for any particular site or customer unless they want the publish pages to match their site.
—————
Then I use “segment_3” to provide the weblog name. All I have to do is give them a URL to bookmark…
sitename.com/index.php/templateGroup/publish2/weblog_short_name
It pulls in all the fields, standard and custom, from that weblog automatically.
—————
Your mileage may vary but it’s worked for me, haven’t run into any glitches so far.

This is going to sound nitpicky, but is there a way to switch the look of the admin panel back to the 1.2 variation? I prefer to see all my options - without having to click “show all” and / or scroll so far down the screen. It’s a jazzy mechanism, it’s attractive, and it does keep the template interface clean; but when you “show all” there’s all that wasted space to the righthand side… Worse comes to worst, I can just hardcode the thing in each of my installs.

I do like the ability to customize our own tabs in the CP interface!

but is there a way to switch the look of the admin panel back to the 1.2 variation?

If you click on the “MY Account” tab in the 1.3 CP it displays with all that fancy expanding/contracting. If on the other hand, you click the “Your Control Panel” link (like at the top of these Forums), it’s different and closer to what was in 1.2 (as I recall, I’ve modified all my member templates so much that I now have nothing to actually compare to).

Worse comes to worst, I can just hardcode the thing in each of my installs.

That’s an ugly process…at least it was for me

I wasn’t crazy about the extra clicking to publish, however, PXlated naild it—- it’s all about stand-alone entry forms!

I didn’t see anyone mention the glossary—that is a great new feature!

Thanks for your hard work,  I’m excited.

The metaweblog only supports 4 custom fields (the “basic 4” in the weblog world) so if you have a lot of custom fields, then it’s not going to be the best option for you. That’s why I don’t use it all the time, myself.  I have a TON.

I"m not interested in the stand-alone form, I would just like to see the publish page like it is in 1.2.1…

Where is the glossary, I couldn’t find it.