[ic] Overhaul Admin UI

jeff at hisgirlfridays.com jeff at hisgirlfridays.com
Thu Aug 18 08:52:11 EDT 2005


On Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 08:55:27PM -0700, Michael Wrightson wrote:

> My main way to interface with our catalog is through
> the Admin UI - which I find a thorougly unsatisfactory
> experience. It is clumsy, slow, and unreliable. I
> never really know what is going to be produced with a
> click on the "Apply Changes" button.

There must be something wrong, in the day to day operations of an IC
site, pressing "apply changes" shouldn't be necessary.  I've been using
the IC backend daily for four or five years now without issue.  Clients
(aka "dumb users") for which I have done development are able to use the
admin with only a few minutes of training and have subsequently never
reported any problems.

A coworker wrote a blog aggregator (www.bloxor.com) using Mozilla's XUL
UI language.  After seeing how easily he was able to create OS-ish
visual elements, I've been wanting to play around with XUL with regards
to a UI for IC.  But as far as reworking the admin UI in HTML, with the
capabilities offered by XUL and MS's upcoming XAML, it'd be silly to use
HTML.  Even absent MS offering, I'd have no problem requiring a
Mozilla-based browser as a prerequisite to using the admin UI, given the
advanced functionality that XUL offers.

Jeff



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