Since I'm more a multimedia designer than a web developer (though I'm getting the hang of it), I'll sometimes post a usability question. So here it is:
I like to create as few tabs as possible in the backoffice of Umbraco, to keep everything organised for me and my clients. This means that I get myself in trouble whenever I create a tab with more than one 'category' under it.
For example: when I have two textfields with titles on the homepage, say one 'About us' and 'Team', I could create a tab called 'Text' in the Umbraco backoffice, which contains the next fields:
About us_Title
About us_Text
Team_Title
Team_Text
As you can see, this doesn't look too well. It looks logical to me as a developer, but it's a lot of unfriendly text to an end-user. So I could try and fix it using labels:
About us
Title
Text
Team
Title
Text
And again, it doesn't look at all. Coincidentally, I downloaded the 'Embedded Content' package, which actually looks quite the way I like it:
As you can see: on the left is the 'label' ('Blok 1: Quotes'), and on the right are all the fields!
Please don't look at the top of this image with the three filled in fields posted there, it's all about the bottom piece, where you can see 'Titel', 'Tekst' etc. (And forget about the '+ Add' and 'Close' buttons as well).
Since 'Embedded Content' only has a few datatypes to choose from, my question is:
Can a similar layout as the one in this picture be created in Umbraco (without Embedded Content, off course)?
I just ran across the Document Type Fieldsets package the other day, which offers a nice way of grouping related properties together under one tab, but giving just a bit more organization to it so that you can keep your labels shorter.
We are currently building a site right now that has three "spotlight" areas on the homepage, each having a title, picture, and clickable link. Here's what it looks like right now in the backoffice:
So, this was just one way we could have done this. It works because there are 9 properties called spotlightTitle1, spotlightTitle2, spotlightTitle3, spotlightLink1, etc... even though I gave them shorter labels to not look so "developer-ish" like you say.
The other way I debated using, was to create a new document type called "spotlight", with three properties for title, link, and image. Then to add these spotlights to the page, you would create them as nodes beneath the current page. (Treating them as "data sub-nodes", not actual pages you can surf to.) The only drawback to this is it clutters up your content tree, and doesn't stop the user from adding more than three (even though we'd just ignore those) and also the user may not know that they need to add these in the first place if they are not explained.
Hope this gives you some other ideas to think about, and I wish you the best of luck!
Wow Funka!, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a lot!
Though I'm missing a sorting / ordering option in it - you can't both say which item WITHIN a certain fieldset has which position as well as you can't say in which order the fieldsets themselves are being organised - this is one of the best packages when you're looking for some usability in Umbraco!
Again, thank you very much! I hope they'll come soon with an alpha version with these ordering things resolved ;-)
Although I didn't seem to have any problem getting my properties to appear in the order I wanted. Just drag them around when setting up the document type to sort them in the same "linear" order as you want them to appear. As long as you do this, the fieldsets themselves appear to generate correctly. (I.e., sort the properties themselves, and the fieldsets will follow.)
Creating categories?
Since I'm more a multimedia designer than a web developer (though I'm getting the hang of it), I'll sometimes post a usability question. So here it is:
I like to create as few tabs as possible in the backoffice of Umbraco, to keep everything organised for me and my clients. This means that I get myself in trouble whenever I create a tab with more than one 'category' under it.
For example: when I have two textfields with titles on the homepage, say one 'About us' and 'Team', I could create a tab called 'Text' in the Umbraco backoffice, which contains the next fields:
Hi,
I just ran across the Document Type Fieldsets package the other day, which offers a nice way of grouping related properties together under one tab, but giving just a bit more organization to it so that you can keep your labels shorter.
We are currently building a site right now that has three "spotlight" areas on the homepage, each having a title, picture, and clickable link. Here's what it looks like right now in the backoffice:
So, this was just one way we could have done this. It works because there are 9 properties called spotlightTitle1, spotlightTitle2, spotlightTitle3, spotlightLink1, etc... even though I gave them shorter labels to not look so "developer-ish" like you say.
The other way I debated using, was to create a new document type called "spotlight", with three properties for title, link, and image. Then to add these spotlights to the page, you would create them as nodes beneath the current page. (Treating them as "data sub-nodes", not actual pages you can surf to.) The only drawback to this is it clutters up your content tree, and doesn't stop the user from adding more than three (even though we'd just ignore those) and also the user may not know that they need to add these in the first place if they are not explained.
Hope this gives you some other ideas to think about, and I wish you the best of luck!
Wow Funka!, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a lot!
Though I'm missing a sorting / ordering option in it - you can't both say which item WITHIN a certain fieldset has which position as well as you can't say in which order the fieldsets themselves are being organised - this is one of the best packages when you're looking for some usability in Umbraco!
Again, thank you very much! I hope they'll come soon with an alpha version with these ordering things resolved ;-)
peter
Glad I could help!
Although I didn't seem to have any problem getting my properties to appear in the order I wanted. Just drag them around when setting up the document type to sort them in the same "linear" order as you want them to appear. As long as you do this, the fieldsets themselves appear to generate correctly. (I.e., sort the properties themselves, and the fieldsets will follow.)
Good luck!
Oh, and you're right again! I somehow messed up the order myself, solved it, works perfectly!
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