Hi Wolfram,
Thanks so much for your detailed input. Appreciate you taking time to
write to us.
Have a good weekend every one. Please keep connecting with us, soon we will
need a lot of testing help from you :-)
Thank,
Judy
Wolfram Rittmeyer wrote:
> I have sent this mail on Wednesday to the developers list but since
> the discussion takes part mostly on the quality list I repost it here
> as well.
>
> My original comments are inlined in Ken's mail below. But the
> discussion so far has changed my views with regard to tagging, so in
> addition to my comments inlined below I would like to make some
> further proposals regarding tagging:
>
> I think all pages should have tags associated with it right from the
> outset. Users might want to add personal tags to them but a base set
> would be nice.
>
> As Wouter has written a partial search would also be nice. His example
> about the two jdbc pages proves that this would ease finding related
> pages.
>
> In my original posting below I have written that for every page in the
> main area related pages should be listed in the sidebar. I still
> consider this to be helpful. The way to find related pages could be
> done using tags. The results should be ordered by the number of tags
> that match the tags of the current page.
>
> I think the results page's usefulness could be enhanced by displaying
> the tag for each of these pages in a smaller font below of each of the
> pages.
>
> Hovering over any listed page could also display a small note
> explaining what this page is used for (after a reasonable and not too
> small amount of time - otherwise this could get annoying). This might
> be another way to help new user find their way around the admin console.
>
> So contradicting my original statement I now find tags _to actually be
> useful_. I nevertheless still think that this dragging feature
> described below would be a nice addition.
>
> --
> Wolfram Rittmeyer
>
>
> And now to the original mail:
>
> Ken Paulsen wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> The GlassFish admin console team has been working hard on ways to
>> simplify our development, while at the same time attempting to
>> improve the experience of using the console. We have created a
>> prototype which shows a couple different designs we are
>> considering... we'd like your feedback on what you think of it.
>> Here's how you can help:
>>
>> * Try the working prototype at: http://63.227.208.233:9999/admingui/
>> * Respond to this email or to my blog that I am about to write about
>> this (http://blogs.sun.com/paulsen). I think Jason and Anissa
>> will probably write too (http://blogs.steeplesoft.com/ or
>> http://blogs.sun.com/anilam/).
>>
>> Here are some things we are particularly interested in feedback on:
>>
>> * Do you like/dislike the menus?
>
> Mostly I like them. Looks are good (apart from minor glitches) and usage
> is intuitive. I have a few issues with them though.
>
> Navigating to the second and even more so to the third level (e.g.
> Configure->Service->Security->Realms) is more cumbersome than in the
> tree-based version. Especially if you switch a lot between different
> sub-menus in lower levels. Thus I think for the menu the structure
> should be reworked so that the depth of the menu can be decreased.
>
> One also does not see topics that are closely related _after_ one has
> selected a task (e.g. Virtual Servers and HttpListeners). The sidebar
> could be handy to achieve just that. So say s.o. has selected JDBC
> Resources the link for JDBC Connections Pools could be displayed in the
> sidebar. Coukld be abit tricky to find the appropriate tasks that fit
> well to another task, but I think this would help the user tremendously.
>
> I think (though this might be due to being used to the tree) that the
> menu is not as tempting for newbies. With the tree it is pretty obvious
> what you can do. So one tries this, tries that and so on. The tree nodes
> stay expanded if not closed explicitly so other options on the same
> level are displayed to the user. It helped me a lot getting used to the
> admin console and I fear that a menu might be not as stimulating to just
> look around as the tree. Which would be a shame given the high quality
> of GlassFish's admin app. But I might be wrong here. I'm very curious
> about further comments coming in.
>
> A small drawback of the menu is that no longer all applications (or
> ressources and so on) are listed - this has been the case in the tree
> and I considered it to be useful.
>
> I assume performance to get better so I just mention it to complete this
> list ;-)
>
>> * Do you like/dislike the tree?
>
> Well given my remarks above it should be ovious that I like the tree a
> lot. It is also something that is more common on the web than menus.
>
> The tree on the other hand has one _big_ drawback itself: It wastes a
> lot of screen real estate.
>
> Another, smaller drawback of the tree if that one of the plus sides of
> the tree can also quickly become a burden: Expanded tree nodes. They
> help if the item that is needed is already displayed and nearby. But if
> one has deployed a lot of apps, configured some ressource etc. the tree
> tends to get quite big quickly.
>
> So maybe (even though this is probably the least wanted option of yours)
> it makes sense to keep both as options (like in your prototype). I think
> menus probably appeal more to advanced users while trees make it easier
> to find your way around GlassFish's admin app in the beginning.
>
> Having said that the toggle button should be displayed somewhat more
> prominently (e.g. next to the help button) and with a better label.
> Though the toggle option is probably only a prototype feature anyway ;-)
>
>> * Do you like/dislike the tagging feature?
>
> I'm sorry, but I think the tagging feature is not very useful. It is
> useful for blogs and even more so for aggregating sites, but I think a
> tag cloud would be a bit over the top for the admin app.
>
> Though I like the concept of a sidebar and the way you implemented the
> minimizing and retrieval!
>
> Instead of tagging I would prefer if one could drag some kind of page
> handle onto the sidebar (comparable to folders in Gnome's nautilus or
> Apple's Finder). Well okay, probably not easy to implement but this
> would be really useful. This is especially true for the menu-based
> implementation. Changing from one page (say deployment) to another (say
> configuration of an http listener) involves way more steps than simply
> clicking on just one handle in the sidebar. And it is likely that some
> tasks get used over and over again while others are rather seldomly
> used. So I think to have the most needed tasks in the sidebar would help
> the user a lot.
>
>
> Quite a lot of text. But as probably most GlassFish users I use the
> admin console a lot and thus I am very interested in your plans. You
> probably should regard this as a compliment ot the overall usefulness of
> the admin console ;-)
>
>
> --
> Wolfram Rittmeyer
>
>
>
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