On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Clayton Weise <cwe...@iswest.net> wrote: >>Our primary focus for the UI design for 3.0 was ease of use, since that >>was a major problem in the 2.0.x UI. In particular, we didn't want to >>overload/overwhelm a new user with a ton of options when they load the UI. > > As mentioned on the UIX document on confluence, since the goal is to make it > something that can be managed from a tablet the sliding panels are fine. The > general complaint isn't that the sliding panels aren't good but that to get > to the information we use on a day-to-day basis it takes too many clicks. > Maybe a better approach is to collect from the complaints in this thread the > common operations and make _those operations_ more easily accessible and in > fewer clicks. > > For example, I understand why virtual routers are buried 8 levels deep, but > in v2 they were listed under system VMs. Perhaps a link from within system > VMs that takes you directly to them? > >>We've thought of adding more toolbar 'quick links' or possibly keyboard >>shortcuts for frequent users to access their commonly-used functionality. >>Ideally these could be customizable and stored in user preferences. Any >>other ideas? > > I think this is probably a good universal problem-solver for the number of > clicks. Some kind of a 'quick links' or 'favorites' section where you can > simply add the page you're looking at to the favorites section to make it > easier to navigate. > > Not related to the previous points, having the ability to sort on a column > would be great too. It was a suggestion from one of our users that I didn't > even think about but when the instances are listed on the page they're in no > particular order that they can see and the ability to sort by name, zone, > state, etc would be nice. I know there's a filter, but maybe I want to see > all and just sort them differently. > > Onto the UIX specifics... > > Sliding Nav: > > I think it's fine as long as it was extended out when you first login or do > something to bring attention to the small "+" in the upper-left corner (it > took me a bit before I noticed it and users aren't always as kind/patient). > > Filterable search: > I'm afraid I just don't understand the point of this. So it would create > this collapsed list after I search/filter for some value. And clicking on > the "show more" would show all records again? What's wrong with the current > way of filtering with the drop-down picklist? > > Flip dashboard: > In terms of functionality it's nice, and the ability to add/remove widgets > from the page will make it a very good red light/green light way of viewing > things. And the flip looks cool :). And assuming that each widget can be > clicked on to drill down into that specific item, this would be particularly > good for tablet users.
So not to overly play devils-advocate - but especially now that there are dedicated Andoid and iPad apps for CloudStack, does anyone use an iPad to interact with the UI - is UI via an iPad still a valid use case? --David
