Thanks for the great feedback! To answer your question regarding
searching... currently we only search tags (not the content seen on any
screens). Implementing a tag-search is very easy and straight-forward,
searching localized content is much harder.
Our thought for tags was that pages could be tagged with some default
tags. The user can then add / remove tags they would like to see, for
example I might put "ken" as a tag on the 5 or 6 pages I like to
visit. Then the search would allow me to find those pages in 1 click.
Tags might be task-oriented (monday tasks), content oriented
(applications), or user oriented (ken).... depending on how you'd like
to use them.
We also plan to have a "settings..." page (the link is in the menu).
This page will allow you to turn off features like tagging which might
otherwise get in your way. :) The sliding panel on the right is
supposed to remember to stay off the screen when you close it also --
that's a current bug.
Hi Ken, *;
a few comments as I have stumbled across this earlier, already... :)
Ken Paulsen schrieb:
Here are some things we are particularly interested in feedback on:
* Do you like/dislike the menus?
Pretty good. Actually, the menu structure looks rather straightforward and
quite task-oriented, in my opinion way more "logical" and consistent than
the current tree-view navigation.
That said: I liked the tree in GFv2 but maybe, if included in v3, it should
be pruned a little - in my opinion it is too big right now, some things
could eventually be arranged in a better way (like, in example, having just
a tag "applications" to contain everything including webapps, ejb modules
and the like in a table-like fashion explaining what kind of type each app
is?).
* Do you like/dislike the tagging feature?
Well... so far tagging seems all around, but honestly speaking, personally I
don't see much use in that feature, around here. Given a strictly outlined,
usable, sane menu structure easily allowing for having all features just a
click away, I am not sure why to eventually add even more complexity by
introducing a navigation hierarchy / structure of my own... ;)
Of course all other comments are also welcome (what's missing? what do
you really like? what do you dislike? etc.).
At first a "visual" thing: I would kinda scale down the big blue page header
("Glassfish V3 Prelude Administration Console"). Sure, it's not that big,
but at least on my notebook display (1280x800), that's quite a big area on
the screen not really containing any meaningful information. Having this
header half as high still should be sufficient IMHO.
Then: As stated I don't personally see the need to have tagging around.
Other than that, I'd like to have the "search" facility located in some more
exposed position (in the main menu?) as "fallback" given someone doesn't
find/want to search the section required... Search does also search the
admin_gui itself and not just the tags added to pages, doesn't it?
* Performance -- it's not good right now, it will be MUCH better
when it's not a prototype (note: it also doesn't help that this
prototype is running on a small desktop machine over a DSL-line...
;) ).
Been testing it using a thin DSL line myself, I think it's not all that bad
either. ;)
* Ajax for updating tags and other portions of the screen is not
implemented
Though I generally like AJAX being used in tools like this, I surely would
enjoy seeing features like this dumped for the sake of performance in final
release. Glassfish v2 admin_gui was quite a pleasant and usable experience
but also had some minor glitches eventually could be done better (log
viewer, in example). From that point of view, less AJAX for the sake of an
admin_gui as light and responsive as somewhat possible seems desirable... In
my opinion (even though drastically limited in terms of features), the ui of
tomcat lambdaprobe management UI (lambdaprobe.org) still somewhat shines
even obviously discontinued...
Oh well, I'll better stop muttering now... :) Keep up the good work, all the
best!
K.