So it seems to be working with the forum stuff for the package now :)
I really like this package and I'm having this "Why did somebody not come up with this simple idea sooner". It really makes a difference for the editor I think.
I have been thinking about some things that could perhaps make this even more usefull - I know you mention in the description that some stuff has been left out because people probably want to customize this themselves. However it might be a good idea to make the package more "plug'n'play"?...my thoughts are the following
* Maybe make sure that the link opens a new window by default? I think it's a bit annyoing that the current window taks me into the backoffice in case I wanted to browse the frontend a bit more - then I would need to open a new window and browse to the website once again
* Make a title text describing what happens when the editor clicks the button to make them feel more comfortable clicking the button (low frequent editors)
* Perhaps it could be possible to use dictionary items for the anchor text and title attribute (if it's added) - But instead of having the dictionary items return the proper item depending on the site culture it should probably display the proper item depending on the culture of the editor logged in? I'm thining it should be possible to get the language the current user is using...only challenge is to figure out how to retrieve the dictionary item based on the user culture...but it must be possible somehow I think.
* Maybe add some nicer styling so the link actually looks more like a button with an illustrative icon, which it seems you're also encouraging people to do by reading the code :) But why not just have it working out of the box? Or perhaps just encourage people to move the styling into an external CSS file once it has been installed
Hope some of the above suggestions make any sense even though they're rather simple - but I think it could make the package even better :)
very good points there, it is thrown together, really to illustrate the concept, but yes lets make it more neaterer out of the box, and tidy up stuff next week.
I guess on the sites I've tested it on, they all happen to use bootstrap and font-awesome, so it looks great :-)
you can't be too sure what people will have available on their sites, style-wise, so it should be as simple as possible, I've only put the hacked in css to align the icon top right because I think there is a good usability / visual memory argument to having it top right; (so whilst I'm aiming to encourage people to style it themselves I'm happy to force this convention on them!!)
But I guess the link button might be the sort of thing that gets added to an umbraco installation after a site design is done and so in some circumstances there won't be someone to blend it gracefully in, so it should default better.
Language is a v good point,
and moving the inline styles to an inline style block will probably make it clearer how to move them to an external stylesheet, and maybe I should add style to use the famfamfam edit icon, rather than expect people to have bootstrap/font-awesome ?
It doesn't open a new link by default, because you can always do that by right clicking, and I hate it when a link forces a new window / tab on me, but not everyone is me, so maybe I should at least make some sort of concession in that direction, a configurable parameter perhaps :-)
Also have you seen Darren Ferguson's proof of concept for editing: http://www.screenr.com/THk8 because that I think nails the inline site editing, that other enterprise cms have out of the box...
I think that using a <style> block will make it easier to do whatever styling is neccessary (if any depending on the frameworks people are using). In our case we're currently not using bootstrap for all projects for instance.
Maybe there could just be a guide about what one might want to do after the installation of the package?
"You might want to add target="_blank"...blalbla"
"It might be a good idea to move the styles to an external stylesheet...blablabla" etc.?
I've bookmarked this thread so I can have a look at Darrens video later - thanks for sharing it, have not seen it before.
If some editors are not allowed to edit certain pages in the backoffice it would be nice to make sure they don't see the edit button if they're browsing a page they can't edit - but I'm not familiar enough with the API to figure out how to do it though - does this makes sense?
also a good point, I shall investigate... but it has missed this sprint, and version 1.1 release candidate is now out, if you are able to see if the language thing makes sense / works ?
for the default button, I've used the umbraco logo rather than an edit icon, because it sort of seems to make more sense, that this is the route to the umbraco backend for the editor, but I may be wrong and a pencil icon may be better...
I'd be tempted to change the default CSS stying to position:fixed, rather than position:absolute
This means the "Edit this" button will be available, even if you are scrolled quite the way down a page, as it'll always remain in the top right of the screen.
ok new to version 1.12: I've added the check to see whether the current logged in user has 'update' permissions on the current node, and if they don't it doesn't show the uEditThis link....
Some thoughts about the package
Hi Marc
So it seems to be working with the forum stuff for the package now :)
I really like this package and I'm having this "Why did somebody not come up with this simple idea sooner". It really makes a difference for the editor I think.
I have been thinking about some things that could perhaps make this even more usefull - I know you mention in the description that some stuff has been left out because people probably want to customize this themselves. However it might be a good idea to make the package more "plug'n'play"?...my thoughts are the following
* Maybe make sure that the link opens a new window by default? I think it's a bit annyoing that the current window taks me into the backoffice in case I wanted to browse the frontend a bit more - then I would need to open a new window and browse to the website once again
* Make a title text describing what happens when the editor clicks the button to make them feel more comfortable clicking the button (low frequent editors)
* Perhaps it could be possible to use dictionary items for the anchor text and title attribute (if it's added) - But instead of having the dictionary items return the proper item depending on the site culture it should probably display the proper item depending on the culture of the editor logged in? I'm thining it should be possible to get the language the current user is using...only challenge is to figure out how to retrieve the dictionary item based on the user culture...but it must be possible somehow I think.
* Maybe add some nicer styling so the link actually looks more like a button with an illustrative icon, which it seems you're also encouraging people to do by reading the code :) But why not just have it working out of the box? Or perhaps just encourage people to move the styling into an external CSS file once it has been installed
Hope some of the above suggestions make any sense even though they're rather simple - but I think it could make the package even better :)
Cheers,
Jan
Thanks Jan
very good points there, it is thrown together, really to illustrate the concept, but yes lets make it more neaterer out of the box, and tidy up stuff next week.
I guess on the sites I've tested it on, they all happen to use bootstrap and font-awesome, so it looks great :-)
you can't be too sure what people will have available on their sites, style-wise, so it should be as simple as possible, I've only put the hacked in css to align the icon top right because I think there is a good usability / visual memory argument to having it top right; (so whilst I'm aiming to encourage people to style it themselves I'm happy to force this convention on them!!)
But I guess the link button might be the sort of thing that gets added to an umbraco installation after a site design is done and so in some circumstances there won't be someone to blend it gracefully in, so it should default better.
Language is a v good point,
and moving the inline styles to an inline style block will probably make it clearer how to move them to an external stylesheet, and maybe I should add style to use the famfamfam edit icon, rather than expect people to have bootstrap/font-awesome ?
It doesn't open a new link by default, because you can always do that by right clicking, and I hate it when a link forces a new window / tab on me, but not everyone is me, so maybe I should at least make some sort of concession in that direction, a configurable parameter perhaps :-)
Also have you seen Darren Ferguson's proof of concept for editing: http://www.screenr.com/THk8 because that I think nails the inline site editing, that other enterprise cms have out of the box...
cheers
marc
Hi Marc
I think that using a <style> block will make it easier to do whatever styling is neccessary (if any depending on the frameworks people are using). In our case we're currently not using bootstrap for all projects for instance.
Maybe there could just be a guide about what one might want to do after the installation of the package?
"You might want to add target="_blank"...blalbla"
"It might be a good idea to move the styles to an external stylesheet...blablabla" etc.?
I've bookmarked this thread so I can have a look at Darrens video later - thanks for sharing it, have not seen it before.
/Jan
Uh! One more thing...
If some editors are not allowed to edit certain pages in the backoffice it would be nice to make sure they don't see the edit button if they're browsing a page they can't edit - but I'm not familiar enough with the API to figure out how to do it though - does this makes sense?
/Jan
Hi Jan
also a good point, I shall investigate... but it has missed this sprint, and version 1.1 release candidate is now out, if you are able to see if the language thing makes sense / works ?
for the default button, I've used the umbraco logo rather than an edit icon, because it sort of seems to make more sense, that this is the route to the umbraco backend for the editor, but I may be wrong and a pencil icon may be better...
cheers
marc
Hi Mark
I'll try giving v 1.1 a spin one of these days and get back to you once I've tested it.
Cheers,
Jan
I'd be tempted to change the default CSS stying to position:fixed, rather than position:absolute
This means the "Edit this" button will be available, even if you are scrolled quite the way down a page, as it'll always remain in the top right of the screen.
Hi Paul
Such a simple thing, yet so powerfull - of course that makes perfect sense :)
/Jan
Thanks Paul, that is so obvious now that you have said it :-)
ok new to version 1.12: I've added the check to see whether the current logged in user has 'update' permissions on the current node, and if they don't it doesn't show the uEditThis link....
is working on a reply...