As one of many talented and respected designers in the Django community, and also as a good friend of Wilson Miner, I'd like to say for the record that the attitude I've seen from the core devs about an admin redesign/overhaul is incredibly frustrating. Whenever someone proposes redesigning the admin interface, it's always met with a "well you could, and of course we would consider it, but really we wouldn't" kind of response, citing one of two reasons -- both of which are, frankly, BS:
1. "Wilson Miner is the designer of the Django admin interface, and he'll redesign it when he deems it necessary." -- First, the idea that Wilson somehow "owns" the Django admin's design is offensive. It's an open source project and anyone should be able to contribute and have their efforts taken seriously. Second, Wilson isn't going to redesign it. I've talked to him about it several times and while I know he'd like to, I really don't think he's going to find the time -- if he was, he would have by know. Because he thinks it needs it. Which leads me to the second reason... 2. "The Django admin interface was designed by Wilson F'ing Miner of Apple.com fame, and therefore is immune from ever have any design problems." -- Look, Wilson is a great designer. Really great. One of the very best I've ever worked with. But he's not perfect. The Django admin does, indeed, have a handful of serious interaction design issues. What's more, in the five years that have passed since Wilson designed it, IxD has come a long way, and there are many useful new concepts that could apply to the Django admin interface. When Wilson designed the admin interface, it was a great piece of interaction design. But it's been five years, and I don't know about you, but *nothing* I did five years ago is still awesome. And like I said, I've discussed it with Wilson on several occasions, and I can confirm that he definitely agrees there are issues and that it could use and overhaul and an update. If the core devs refuse to listen to anyone else who says it has issues, then please, at least listen to Wilson. I've talked with several designers in the Django community at various times (among them Nathan Borror and Bryan Veloso), and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that there's a general feeling that it's not worth our time to put any effort into a Django admin design overhaul, because it won't be taken seriously if it doesn't come from Wilson. And that sucks. Jeff On Feb 3, 5:44 pm, Russell Keith-Magee <freakboy3...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:35 AM, tezro <tezro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi everybody. > > > I use Django for about a year, do websites for about 5 years, am kind > > of experienced in web, interface and techdesign, used lots of CMS or > > other site management tools (99% is a piece of crab). And I'm writing > > here because although Django admin default look is successive, I think > > it has lots of interface related misconceptions and element related > > eye-unfriendly problems. > > Design opinions are always welcome, and I'm not going to claim that > Django's admin is perfect. However, please keep in mind that Django's > admin site was originally designed by Wilson Miner, who has quite a > reputation in design circles (as a point of reference - Apple's > website is in his portfolio). I'm sure Wilson would do some things > differently if he redesigned Django's admin site today, but claiming > that the original design has "lots of misconceptions" and > "eye-unfriendly problems" is slightly overstating the situation. > > > Question is: I can modify templates, css, not so sure about images > > that fit well enough, but mainly I can position all the given elements > > to date and CSS them as if I was doing and redesigning it for myself. > > Is it realy needed and could be implemented to trunk, or everybody > > just uses it as is notwithstanding some dirt? > > > As the most obvious thing - here's the margin/padding problem on the > > left/right side of the page. One of a hundreds... > >http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4329186446_212477b9e4_o.png > > I'm not necessarily convinced that the margin padding "problem" you > identified is inherently a problem - variations in horizontal > alignment can serve a useful design purpose. > > However, that doesn't mean we're going to reject all your proposals, > or that horizontal alignment like you describe couldn't form an > important part of a larger design. Design proposals are always > welcome. If you think you can improve on the visual design of Django's > admin, put together a proposal, and we'll consider it. It doesn't > matter if your proposal takes the form of mockups, or a set of > CSS/markup replacements - as long as we can see and understand the > changes you want to make. > > Yours > Russ Magee %-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-develop...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
