[33]Further improve Frontend Editing!

[guenter 1234]

Topic: Further improve Frontend Editing for non-technical users!
Please note that this WhitePaper is not complete yet!
If you are interested in the same topic, please feel free to comment on my suggestions.
I will edit this post in the upcoming weeks and of course add your ideas and explanations.

Why does this need to be done?
In serveral projects i often experienced that non-technical users had a hard time editing the content. The problem is not writing simple text but using the features Joomla has to offer. There a serveral things i would like to change in order to help the non-technical, unexperienced user.

What could be done? ...some Ideas
1. Image Manager
Rename it to File-Manager because it is also capable of uploading files like pdf, zip etc.

2. WYSIWYG-Editor
- Integration of Image-, ReadMore-, PageBreak-Button into WYSIWYG-Editor
- Linking Joomla Articles
- Copy and Paste of Content from Word and HTML-Sites (Parameter for automatic cleaning)
- Configuration of the Editor-Functions to allow customization
- Allow installation of TinyMCE Plugins

3. Merging the read more and pagebreak button as suggested by hackwar http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=500&t=265607


What will change for the USER?
Basicly the goal is to make it easier and more intuitiv for the user. Please consider this in your comments, ideas.


Thanks.
guenter

[mcsmom]

There already is an image manager that is perfectly capable of uploading pdfs,

What I would like to suggest related to editing that there be a component that allows administrators to install their choice of TinyMCE plugins.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=73 ... unc=browse

[numbscot]

I agree the front end creation/editing of articles can be too complicated for some users. Anything that will make this easier would be a good thing to see.

[bobbravo2]

I think that combining the pagebreak and read more is a great idea. Maybe rename image to: media. I think it would also be wise to include the GSOC 08 tags feature to simplify a more horizontal categorization sytem: http://developer.joomla.org/gsoc2008/tags.html

Tags could be used for articles that are uncategorized.

I also think that adding tooltips to each of the items to explain to novice users the exact nature of the items, will make the interface much more accessible to novices.

Also, the layout of sections/categories could be improved to show that the site is structured as:
section\category
The purpose of this is to let new users create a conceptual map of the layout of the site, which is hard to do if you do not know what a section/category is, and how the two are distinct. The solution is to format the Section so that it is the parent of the category.

In addition, there should be an option to specify the action of the image/media button to call a 3p WYSIWYG editor (such as JCE) instead of the native image manager. This way the users are not confused by 2 different editors.

[feldon27]

Does anyone still use TinyMCE? JCE!

[bobbravo2]

Why not just work out a deal to integrate JCE (FREE) into the core? It's a far better WYSIWYG editor.

[bobbravo2]

I have a core override that dramatically cleans up the front end UX. If interested PM or Email me.