RTD Admin Commands Panel makeover

I would like to discuss the editing procedure for General Templates and Product Templates. Not complaining, but would like to explore alternatives. And I apologize that this is such a long post, but a solution to this would save everyone a lot of time.

Things get especially irritating when working for an extended time with editing existing General Templates. And I guess most companies do not need to edit a bunch of Templates often so this could be isolated to only a few of us. Product Templates are not much of a problem as those are just a grid of designs. General Templates are another story all together.

The editing method is preformed by opening the browser while signed in to admin. When in the designer, the top of the window shows RTD Admin Commands and under that sub tabs which when clicked produce drop downs which in turn push the design window down. The current layout for all this is relatively new replacing the old layout with the Admin Commands placed in the designer window in the items list area. IMHO both of these methods are rather cumbersome. The issues with the current setup are multiple.

1) Everything shifting down requires lots of scrolling up and down. We use displays with high pixel counts. Using this interface on a smaller height display is totally impractical.
2) Depending on your designer layout, popup and popdown modals may (most likely) be cut off requiring even more clicking and scrolling.
3) When one has a lot of general templates in a category, the scrolling list of templates seems like an eternity in the small window above the designer.
4) After clicking Save Over Last Imported, the list of General Templates closes as the browser saves and updates the template. Which means that one must use the Show Saved General Templates dialog ordeal after each and every save. More clicking, scrolling and category hunting.

A possible solution, if it would work I don't know, can be seen from Alex’s floating window demonstration. I’ve made a crude mockup of such a thing. Making everything in the window as compact as possible and using one scrollable column to view templates would be good I think. Showing/hiding and moving this window would be very nice to make it work for every designer layout.

That could be an interesting approach.
During next week I'll give it a try, I'll keep you posted on updates.

Thanks!

It was an adventure, but had been done.
Now the admin bar is a floating toy, becoming pretty small when collapsed. Should halp in keeping the screen more organized.

Will wait for comments!

Thanks Alex. Looking over this for quite some time. Personally, I think is a great improvement. I like it. But, it takes some getting used to. Those of us who've been using the previous incarnation will have to adapt to a very new way of working and I think it is much better when you get it. Moving the bar somewhere on the screen that is comfortable for your work habits and screen size (for me it is just under the design area if possible) so that loading templates can be seen in the design area. It is then a much easier click on the arrow to minimize the command window as needed.

Few things that would help tremendously right now: 1) Add another arrow on left side of bar also for quicker access . . . or for dummies like me who forget the bar is double clickable. 2) For General Templates - keep the left side box always visible and only scroll the right side templates. 3) Implement suggestion 4 (start of this thread) if possible.

I can fully appreciate that this change could be difficult for others at first or perhaps forever. Will be interesting to hear comments (after getting accustomed to the change).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2014 07:33AM by cos.

I made updates. Let's move the comments to the new thread where I annouced all the changes.
It's here:
http://support.realtimedesigner.com/forum/read.php?1,5725