[jboss-user] [JBoss Portal] - Re: User Input Req for 2.6 Usability and UI enhancements

[PeterJ]

Here are a few suggestions:

1) The login screen, even with the changes made to the current 2.4 source, still looks out of place.  Why can't it be formatted using the Nphalanx theme?  The style sheet and graphics are available.  Besides, many systems that require logging on have a default (i.e., non-personalized) look for the login page.

2) In the Administration Portlet.  In the tree view, select a portlet within a page.  One the right side, click Theme.  Three render options show up with drop-down list boxes.  I have tried every combination of the options there, and there appear to be only 3 or 4 workable combinations (many combinations are even duplicates).  Instead of having three options, make it a single ?Portlet window rendering? option with the choices a) show title and borders, b) show title, no border, c) show borders, no title (of dubious use unless the entire window is bordered, which it currently is not), and d) no title or borders.  For the hard-code, you can still provide an 'Advanced' button to show the three rendering options.

3) Same location as #2.  Display a graphic image that corresponds to the rendering option(s) chosen (this is made easier if you follow suggestion #2).  This way the user can see how the portlet will be displayed without having to go to the page to see.

4) In the Administration Portlet.  In the tree view, select a page.  The drop-down list box of protlets can get very unwieldy.  Instead, display the portlets in a table with columns such as portlet name, portlet display name, description, keywords, when deployed, etc.  Allow sorting on each column (the drop-down list is unsorted, making finding anything difficult).  Display only 10, 20 or 50 items (let user choose how many) and provide navigation buttons to move forward and backwards through the entire collection of portals.  Also, provide a filter capability to show only portals whose name, description keywords match a search/regular expression.  Also, provide a portlet preview capability where the protlet is displayed on a temporary page.

5) Same location as #4.  Why is the 'center' column to the left of the 'left' column.  Ask me how many times I have put portlets into the wrong location.  Perhaps the better thing to do is display the selected portlets in an order that corresponds to their location on the page, perhaps with a border around each section on the page.  This would given a better visual clue of how the page is laid out.

6) Same location as #4.  Why is there only a single, fixed layout available?  Why not provide more options.  For example, offer the user a header, a footer, a center column, a left column, and a right column.  Let the user turn each column off or on.

7) Same location as #4.  Provide some mechanism for common functions on the same page that displays the selected portlets.  For example, to remove a prtlet from the page layout I must first click on the portlet and then click the destroy button.  Adding a delete button (next to the arrow buttons that move the portlet to a different location) would help.  Other common functions might be the rendering option (especially if you follow recommendation #2).

8) Check the user interface against Firefox.  Some things don't work.  For example, tool tips for some icons which appear in IE don't appear in Firefox because the 'title' property was not defined.


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