Thread

Re: http://ee-podcast.com/episodes/ellislab-qa-with-james-mathias

About halfway through, James shares some interesting comments on EL’s position regarding Pixel & Tonic’s Assets as “competition” for the internal work being undertaken with the native EE File Manager.

I’m curious about the community’s thoughts on this…

Now that the new(-ish) File Manager has been released, I have to ask, is this really the best continuing use of resources?

My initial reaction is that there is a heck of lot of work to be done, especially within the CP… I’m concerned that so many resources are apparently still being tied up on the File Manager, when Assets—for better or worse—makes a point of doing what the File Manager currently doesn’t (hello subfolders). Why take the position of seeing Assets as “competition” to be “beat”?

The statement that EL needs to “compete” with third-party add-ons is troubling in general… Why? EL’s already secured their revenue from the core license, so how is a third-party add-on “competition”? Moreover, if the add-on does it better, why reinvent the wheel, instead of just facilitating add-ons from doing their part even more? The reality is, EL has limited resources—resources that are clearly strapped as it is right now—and Pixel & Tonic (or any other add-on dev) are essentially extending the dev team working on making EE better for everyone.  In this case, despite the criticism James levies at Assets, from what I have seen, most EE devs agree that it has File Manager beat.

How long is EL going to focus on “improving” the native File Manager, which has basically now been made redundant by Assets?

At this point, there is a heck of a lot of other core functionality that is dated (at best), or broken (at worst). As the feedback shows, there are dozens of CP UX issues or feature requests to address, the Forum module badly needs an update to get out of 2004… member management needs multiple member group support & non-speciality member profile templates… the Wiki module seems to be abandoned entirely… and the Comments module has been already acknowledged by EL to desperately need an update (http://ellislab.com/blog/entry/lets_discuss_disqus), but for now has been passed over even by EL themselves in favour of Disqus… These are all points raised in the podcast as questions, but with no concrete indication from James that any of these are on tap (with the exception of a bit of a call-out for improved Member Group support). These lagging components are largely what is keeping EE stuck five years ago. 

I don’t find much solace in James’ “infinite timeline” statement—I mean, I’m glad to hear he’s in it for the long haul, but I don’t think such commitment lessens the need to address these long-standing issues ASAP.

Does it really have to take 3 months to remove some accordions from the CP?

Really looking forward to seeing the roadmap for what’s on tap… It’s hard to enthusiastic when it seems the focus on the File Manager seems to be more about saving face than committing to putting the focus on improvement where it is most needed.

Thoughts?

Hi Graham,

It would be wrong for us to operate inside a bubble, depending on third party developers to fill the gaps.

You are correct, there are quite a lot of things that need attention and need to be fixed. Some small, some enormous. You are correct that resources are tight. So you are surely clear that priorities have to be set.

The file manager is a priority. It’s core functionality, it needs to work well. It doesn’t need to be or beat assets, but assets certainly gives us a measuring stick, by which to determine what we need to provide. The file manager is not made redundant, as assets works off of the existing structure of the core file manager.

I am in it for the long haul, and like it or not, we cannot fix all the real and or perceived problems in ExpressionEngine overnight or even within the confines of a single release cycle. It is going to take time.

I’ve been on the job less than 2 months, and we have already made some huge strides towards improving ExpressionEngine which as you know is only one of many things I’m involved in.

I appreciate your feedback and suggestions as always.

It is also worth it to mention that some of the improvements being made to the File Manager are in an effort to provide an upgrade path to those that were using the Gallery Module. So while some of it has to do with UX there is also another driving reason that needs to be addressed.

Some of the things we can require from EllisLab is security awareness, multi-lingual support and that EE works across different servers. This is the main reason why I prefer to use native solutions. My experience is that many add-on devs do not fulfill those requirements. I’ve had my share of messed-up installs. That is not to say, that I’m not very grateful for those add-ons that add functionality and actually fulfill the criteria mentioned above. In addition, I want sustainable solutions, not quick fixes. So, EL keep up the good work. Restlessness and quick fixes is not the answer. I actually admire they way you manage to navigate all the ‘hotheads.’

There should be a good core solution for the file manager. We shouldn’t have to pay extra for such a ubiquitous need.

Also, competition is good. I think viewing Assets as competition is a good thing. James’s comment (“It doesn’t need to be be or beat assets, but assets certainly gives us a good measuring stick…”) causes me to believe he has a great perspective and attitude.

CartThrob and Brilliant Retail are competition, but from what i know, neither beats the other. They both come down to a matter of preference. I hope this is how the core File Manager and Assets will be.

I am in it for the long haul, and like it or not, we cannot fix all the real and or perceived problems in ExpressionEngine overnight or even within the confines of a single release cycle. It is going to take time.

I’ve been on the job less than 2 months, and we have already made some huge strides towards improving ExpressionEngine which as you know is only one of many things I’m involved in.

I appreciate your feedback and suggestions as always.

Dear James,

You’ve been on the job for almost 18 months by now, and have had a second designer, Sam Wilson, on staff for nearly a year. This makes at least 24 man-months of designer time. Surely there is something to show us. What DazzleThunder have you come up with during your time at EllisLab, and when will it see the light of day?

The hiring “T” shaped people graphic, and all the staff forum signature images - what else do you want Brendon?

I’m hoping we are about to see something amazing from EL, and that’s why they’ve ignored pretty much every public core competency a business has over the past year or more, but I think it’s a fair question.

Otherwise, I dream of Les on stage, behind a slide saying, “Oh, just one more thing…”

Oh, I forgot the PixelBuzz html email.

I too would love to see some insight (Dribbble perhaps?) on what’s been achieved in that time. It’s been a while.

I didn’t realise how long the designers had been working at EllisLab until I came across Brendon’s latest post.

I really hope that they’ve been busy working on great things and will have something to show soon.

I have to say though, that it’s a little worrying that there’s been so little to show for the amount of design time EllisLab has invested so far. I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to expect a brand new EE3 control panel to have been designed in that time, and a lot more besides. If we’re nowhere near that, then I think some serious questions need to be asked.

Steven’s suggestion of using Dribbble to show some previews is a good one. There’s a large and passionate EE community out there and it’d be good to engage with them on this. I don’t think designing in a silo is a good idea as we want nice surprises, not bad ones. 😊

Don’t think EL will answer - this is a community support forum and they don’t do community very well.

There’s a thin line between Apple-like tight-lipped secrecy and complete radio silence.
It’s safe to say many EE devs feel Ellislab is on the wrong side of that line at the moment.

EllisLab.

We care. We really do. We wouldn’t be moaning and bitching and wailing and gnashing our teeth if we didn’t care. I had secretly hoped that at the recent EECI you would come out with a big surprise and then everyone would be happy and stop moaning again. There was no surprise.

A few times you have ‘readjusted’ your social media strategy. You have apologised multiple times. And now we are back in radio silence mode. If you want my 2p (and you might, but at this point it feels like you don’t care about our opinions at all - I hope this isn’t true), then you should try and find a happy medium between community interaction and this ‘please the community with a product’ stance that you have currently taken.

I think my biggest worry is that if there is a big reveal coming, an EE3 or whatever, that it will be too late, and the community will be too disheartened to care, listen or engage. And that would be awful, because, as I said before, we really care.

Rob

I don’t usually comment on these things, but it really is staggering. If a rival CMS came out that worked in a similar way but with actual drive and passion behind it, it would have the potential to put ExpressionEngine to the sword - that would keep me up at nights if I were at EllisLab.

Go on guys, at least drop a teaser that EE3 is on its way!!

Sometimes our timing won’t align with a community event. We’ve learned from both EECI and SXSW that it’s worse to talk about something too early than to disappoint those who eagerly want to see what we’re doing because they care. I know some of you may not believe that to be true, but this is not an intuitive statement, it’s based on actual results. And maybe it’s not true for all companies, but it certainly is for ours.

As for our designers’ work, keep in mind that EllisLab went almost ten years with no designer on staff. It’s no small task even for two extremely talented and hardworking people (which both James and Sam are) to help us remold our design-less machine into one that can produce the type of output at the pace we want. As James said, we’re looking long haul here.

Hi Derek,

Thanks for replying, I do appreciate it.

But my last paragraph still holds true; not everyone appreciates, or is buoyed by the work you are producing. I saw the massive massive list of bug fixes in the last release and was impressed, but some people don’t read the changelog and are like “EllisLab haven’t done ANYTHING for months now and are completely ignoring the community”.

Dribble something, PixelBuzz something, hell, even accidentally leak something to EE-Insider, because as I said, people will (or already have) give up, and that is such a sad state of affairs when you have such an awesome product.

Losing Marcus and Kyle (and to some extent Lisa) was a massive blow; when I met Marcus at EECI Leiden I was pleased to be talking to someone who could evangelise about EE as much as I do, and I really believe you are missing that front-facing ‘outlet’ for people to identify/moan/praise.

I can understand your reasons, I just disagree strongly with them, and it feels like that is also the community at large’s opinion too. As much as you can ‘ignore’ this, never forget that the community will make or break you in the long run 😊

And as I write this I’ve just seen a PixelBuzz appear in my inbox!