On Nov 18, 2008, at 1:42 PM, Adam van den Hoven wrote:
You just hit on an interesting idea for an extension.
Frequently, people are going to reuse the same bits over and over.
Instead of making them go find it, what if we put a "scratchpad" on
the right hand side of the parts (which will consume some space from
the parts but that should be OK the visibility is important). This
will give them a place to retrieve commonly used bits and then copy
and paste them back into their content. Give it an easy way to save
new scratches without leaving the page (key to making it useful).
Provide a separate UI to "tweak" the scratch (edit, give it a title
and a description) and we can bootstrap a bunch of scratches which
will ease their entry into the world of "markup"
Adam
development has stalled on it, but the start of a browser extension
intends to add an area where things like this can be done:
http://github.com/saturnflyer/radiant-browser-extension/tree/master
there's nothing much there other than the interface, but my intent is
to provide a list of draggable snippets and allow extensions to add
their own stuff (such as page_attachments)
On 18-Nov-08, at 10:33 AM, Steven Southard wrote:
I think maybe you just need to take another approach with her.
Seems sometimes web development is more psychology then
programming. Does she just put her hand over her ears when you say
Markdown or Textile? I've had a client like that! She just wants
to make headers, paragraphs, and upload pictures right? Keep
working with her, tell here to take a few breaths, and keeping
reminding her that the filters are there to keep the "technical
stuff" out of her way.
My clients don't seem to mess with the snippets, tags, or css
classes that much. They just use the filters and maybe one tag and
some classes that they copy and past from where ever else it was
used on the site. It takes a bit for them to get the hang of it
but if they can see the simple patterns they'll be able to add
their content.
Steven
Indeed. Radiant's success can at least be partly attributed to it's
simplicity.
On Nov 18, 2008, at 11:44 AM, Casper Fabricius wrote:
Hi everyone,
I've used Radiant for more than 10 web sites during the past 1,5
years, and I really like it. Definitely the best CMS for Rails.
However, I have a client whose content editor is very frustrated
with the system. She can only just tolerate using Markup, and she
refuses to write any kind of HTML - Radius tags falls into this
category from her point of view. According to her, a proper CMS
would hide all this "technical stuff" and provide custom forms for
all types of content.
I know what the core team might answer: Radiant CMS was not built
for this woman. It was built for small sites and content editors
with a bit of technical insight. But Radiant is still the most
user-friendly CMS that exists for Rails, and I don't really feel
like coding PHP just get a more "advanced" UI, which will suck
anyway.
So my question is: How do the rest of you handle this? How do you
hide away "technical" stuff such as snippets, tags and css
classes? Do you:
- Use any of the WYSIWYG filters? (I've done this a few times, it
has its own problems)
- Build very specific custom layouts for all variants for pages?
- Use a generic templating interface such as radiant-templates-
extension to wrap everything up?
- Write custom extensions to wrap all kinds of "elements" nicely
in forms? (such as newsletters, spots, list of various items, etc.)
Can Radiant be palatable for content editors such as my client, or
is it simply the wrong choice in this case?
It's tough to know how to handle it without a better understanding,
but I've had clients ask for WYSIWYG and had it only cause more
problems once they start using it.
I do as much as I can to handle the layout of content with CSS so that
entering the text stays simple. When clients want to start moving
things around and adding more complex HTML within the content, I try
to first find a way to simplify the content.
If she wants to pay you to create forms, then create the forms. I
think that as one goes down a path to make things simpler you may find
that it ends up being more complex. Abstracting out content into forms
may or may not do this.
I think that its reasonable that she not want to write HTML or radius
tags, but she may be adding more hoops for you and herself to jump
through when learning to type <r:snippet... might be a simpler and
less expensive solution.
I'm interested to see other responses.
-Jim
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