Story
Magnolia should let me navigate and browse my web site structure by using a mouse, a keyboard and using a touch device. It should be easy and quick to find a particular page without having to work myself down the site hierarchy.
Description of desired behavior
Magnolia offers to view the site structure in a tree view and single or a set of pages in a list view.
Browsing the structure
Navigating the tree view showing the web site structure is handled in Navigating trees, while working with items in the tree is described in Focusing, selecting and opening items.
Selecting an item or focusing an item for a longer time causes an "Page details" view to show additional details on a page. An important element in this view is the thumbnail preview, which shows a small rendering of the page.
Show, hide and rearrange table columns
All columns except the "Page name" and the column containing the checkboxes can be visible or hidden. Additional columns not initially visible may be offered for display by the tree view.
Columns are shown in a configurable order, but the "Page name" and checkboxes column are exempt and remain fixed at their initial position.
When using the keyboard, the column order and the hide/show settings of a column must be specified on a separate settings page still to be defined.
Browsing a set of pages
Navigating a list showing pages of the site is handled in Navigating lists, while working with items in the tree is described in Focusing, selecting and opening items.
Magnolia also offers to browse the pages of a site in a list. In this view, a number of sorting and filtering options are available:
- options to sort pages alphabetically, by last modification date and by size
- options to filter pages by tag, author and page status
- advanced options to filter pages, such as by site, translation status or locale (has to be further defined)
The page status is comprised of both activation status as well as workflow status, if workflows are configured.
Inline editing of page attributes
Some page attributes shown in the list or structure views may be edited directly within the view. Among these are the page URL, the page name and navigation title. To enter inline editing, select an item, then click or tap on it again after a short delay (to avoid actually double-clicking it) or hit ENTER on the keyboard.
The attribute you clicked or tapped on will then become editable. When using the keyboard only, the first attribute of all editable attributes in the currently selected row or of the currently selected item becomes editable.
Showing errors or warnings
has to be defined still
Inline editing restricted to simple attributes
Note that inline editing will be restricted to work for simple attributes only. While e.g. changing a page template in the structure view was possible in previous versions of Magnolia, it won't be supported starting with version 5. Changing a page template can be a complex operation and may require you to enter values for required attributes, both of which is not viable using inline editing. Complex page attributes thus may only be changed by actually editing the page properties in a dialog or by opening the page for editing.
Command summary for inline editing
|
Mouse |
Keyboard |
Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
Start inline editing an attribute |
select item, wait, then click on attribute |
select an item, then hit ENTER |
select item, wait, then tap on an attribute |
Inline edit the next attribute |
- |
while inline editing an attribute, |
- |
End inline editing an attribute, |
hit ENTER |
hit ENTER |
hit ENTER |
Stop inline editing an attribute, |
click somewhere else |
hit ESC |
tap somewhere else |
Quickly find a page
In the list view, a search box allows to search for pages. Search results are shown immediately in the list view and may be further filtered and sorted using the options available there. There's no search option in the structure/tree view - the user shall change to the list view to run a search.
As is the case in today's web search engines, the search is not merely done on page URLs, but on a number of item elements at the same time:
- the page URL
- the page name
- the navigation title
- on author names
- on names of user roles
Alternatively, this search can be restricted to work on only one of these elements.
Grouping a set of pages
In the list view, the pages displayed may be grouped according to various criteria. Currently discussed is the grouping by tag, by author, by site and by template. Note that pages may show up in more than one group.
Mockups
Browsing the structure
Browsing a set of pages, quickly find a page
Variant 1: filter and group options in top bar
Variant 2: filter and group options in side bar
Open questions
- How are messages displayed: errors, warnings, informational messages