I have two forms (below) one is a trip calculator and one a spending money calculator
There is a spending money radio on the trip calculator(if clicked "yes", will open the spending money calculator in new tab, functionality not added yet)
From a usability perspective should I:
Leave the two calculators separate as they are large enough visually already
OR
Add a conditional section to the main calculator where if clicked yes, the spending money calculator will open in the same page as the main calculator making the whole calculator longer if opened?
http://tripcalculator.travel2mania.com/WrestleMania.php
http://spendingcalculator.travel2mania.com/WrestleManiaspending.php
Do you have the time to do this right? Because if you do, I would not use a form generator, and I would not even use forms. See this question.
I also would use a tabbed UI. The forms are a bit overwhelming... having fewer sections per screen, with either a next=> button, or a tabbed UI, would be easier to use. (Note that when creating a tabbed interface, the tabs are merely a visual trick. In reality, all fields are available to you, the developer, as if they all were on the same page) Thanks to jQueryUI Tabs, making tabbed interfaces are a breeze!
If you re-work your UI, then you can bring both up on the same screen.
Also, sounds like you could use some tips on using modals (aka "lightboxes"). You will love them.
And, if you don't already know about these two things, you should take a half hour each and brush up...
jQuery -- important: use down arrow to start showing things on each slide
flexbox
More about AJAX
Also...
Some tips on building your project
For each of the above widgets (Tabs, Modals, etc) - do a few tiny, simplistic tests/exercises first. Don't just run into trying to work them into your project. You will not save time -- you will waste it.
When you build your project, first build each of these widget interfaces in its own project -- as though that one thing (the jQUI Tabs, for eg) is the only thing in the project. So build each widget separately. THEN integrate them as the final step. You will be glad you did.
If you have any PHP in the project, either use a lot of fopen() Write-to-File statements, so you know where the code got to before it crashed, or learn to use the PHPConsole Chrome add-in.
Related
Does anyone know if I can integrate GrapeJS into my own website so clients could build their own websites using it? IF anyone has done this, how easy is it and are there downsides?
This question is pretty open ended, but I'll take a shot at it.
The short answer is yes, you can use Grapesjs to allow clients to make their own sites; however, the details matter.
Grapesjs by default doesn't know anything about your stack, website structure, metadata, etc. You will need to either supply plugins or implement those features yourself. I've worked on a project for a company that used Grapesjs to implement single page apps and I'll include just some of the tweaks we had to manage.
Hiding certain layers that only confuse average users.
Hiding pretty much all of the styling, and using traits to allow people to pick from some predefined styles.
Take the html, css on store and generate the final html page, and store it in our static serving folder on the server.
Implement a wrapping "App" component that has traits for the different metadata we want users to control (open graph metadata, title, etc)
and those are just the big things, I'm sure I am forgetting several small ones.
For your application, you'll also need to implement a custom trait for links / buttons that allows you to link from one "page" to another. As well as, a way to allow a user to pick which page to work on.
The long answer is Yes, but Grapesjs is only the starting point.
Yes you can.
However it is not straightforward.
If you want to build a Drag Drop Editor like GrapeJS Demo, here is the Source Code - https://github.com/artf/grapesjs-preset-webpage
You can see an implementation at https://codegres.org/dragdrop
I am an intermediate level web designer & web developer. I built 5 official websites for hotels and not only, until now(2 years experience). But I have an uncertainty.
Should I use an already coded template like this for building the next websites? I already did 1 website with that great template and it saved me a good amount of time. My fear is that without that template, I don't have excellent skill for coding components like navbar, footer, making a page element to stay on the page in the position I want, etc.
I'm almost always copying code snippets from the net, let's say not coding from scratch.
My thought is: hey, you're using a template, you're not a real web designer/developer. I was thinking to only use bootstrap + wordpress, but if I use that CANVAS template( it already has lots of bootstrap components coded, css and javascript for almost any situation ) it would save me even more time.
What do you say, guys, what should I do ? Thank you !
Whatever it takes to achieve your objective in the fast manner and have quality output should be your way forward. I would not worry about purism of solutions used as the objective. When you need it, you will know it - as the time will come when you know this template is not enough, then you can go back to custom solutions. Ultimately no one can handle every aspect of the development, using open source, libraries and frameworks is nowadays a skill in itself. Reapplying easy modules will help you to focus on other crucial elements of your app ( move to mobile, speed, additional functionality etc.)
I need a client side HTML form builder I can implement into my project to give my users to ability to add/edit form design and field properties as desired. I am using Telerik Kendo just to provide some background and I have a basic form, however if the user needs additional fields, or even additional labels I want them to be able to edit their own forms.
I found Jot Forms and dozens more (http://www.jotform.com) but that does not work for me. All fields are in a vertical fashion. I need the users to be able to drop a field, move it around where ever they need.
So in the end, I need a form builder I can use in my project where users can create and use alternate forms. They need to be able to drag, drop the form element anywhere on the page and of course edit the properties as necessary.
If there is anything out there I would really appreciate some help on this.
I appreciate the constructive feedback. I have ventured into discovering what it would take to build one of my own.
I found most form builders already done out there that I demoed would build a beautiful form. As long as your desired form is simple. As I tested I found complex forms would require additional coding on the back end. Something most users don't know how to do, and something that would be a support nightmare.
I so far have found that the JQuery UI draggable, droppable, etc. features will provide me with ample tools do build my own. So far I have a proof of concept where I can drag items onto a workspace. The nice thing is that I can incorporate HTML code specific to my Javascript framework, Kendo. We use it at work and it has nearly everything including drag and drop. Just not functional in a way where I could see building a form builder.
I am learning all of this as I go, so thank you for commenting and please forgive me if I sound inexperienced. I am, but I am not afraid and in fact love to get my hands dirty with new stuff.
On this page, I want to get my scrolling dinosaur name window to specifically keep that dinosaurs name at the top so the person doesn't have to scroll all the way down to the next dinosaur.
I also want to know if there's an easier way to do this window.
My predicament is this....
I have over 30 dinosaurs on here. Each time I add a new one I have to update each and every one of the dinosaurs pages to add that one new dinosaur. Its not really time effective... Is there a better way without having to use frames?
My code is open so you can look at it and modify it at your leasure.
Thanks!
Vince
At this point I would suggest you go for server side code. Since you have 30 dinosaurs, it would be much easier to create and maintain a simple page using server side scripts such as PHP or ASP.NET to load the dinosaur from a database.
What are server side scripts?
Server side scripts allow you to dynamically generate a page on the fly whenever the user requests a page. For example, take youtube's search page. Rather than generate a seperate page for every single possible search term, they simply have a base template there, and then they fetch the relevant results based on the search query. The same can be applied to your site. You can have one page for all the dinosaurs, and you would just load the appropriate dinosaur based on the url.
Once you do that, putting the current dinosaur at the top of the page would be a trivial task. Since it appears that you already have a fair amount of knowledge in HTML, it should be easy for you to pick up and use some PHP. Codecademy has some excellent tutorials.
Along the same lines as Kevins answer but more specifically I'd like to recommend you look into a PHP MVC framework such as CakePHP, Laravel or CodeIgniter.
You've done all the hard work manually building these pages, which is awfully time consuming.
Once you learn one of these frameworks and you'll rebuild this site in a day.
If your links had id attributes on them you could scroll the list to a position by linking to #whatever. Here's a quick code example of a link.
<li id="camarasaurus">Camarasaurus</li>
Here's a small example: http://jsbin.com/ExExEvAB/1/edit?html,css,output
As for making it easier to administrate, I'd look into PHP since it's widely available and there's tons of resources to learn from. When you're basically looking for is <?php include "dinosaur-menu.html" ?> since you're thinking in terms of frames. You can make it even easier but this alone should make it a ton easier to update.
I really started to enjoy Mixture recently. It's great for prototyping and is, in my opinion, perfect for exactly what you're trying to do here.
We are designing a web site and have run into some UI challenges that would be neatly solved with a tabbed interface. Users will interact with different elements of the site (there are some basic view/edit/copy/paste functions available) and having only one object in one tab visible at a time simplifies things quite a bit.
We are, of course, completely comfortable with tabbed interfaces but what about novice users? I've searched the web for guidance and I haven't found anything definitive. Do you have experience presenting a tabbed interface to novice users and did they have trouble with it? Or, have we reached the point where everyone is comfortable with tabs and we can use them without reservation?
Usability is important-- more so for this project than most. If naive users are confused by a tabbed interface it just won't work and we'll have to find another way.
In his excellent book "Don't Make Me Think" (Sensible.com), Steve Krug discusses the benefits of using a tabbed interface:
They're self evident
They're hard to miss
They're slick
They suggest a physical space
He goes on to describe the keys to successful tabs as demonstrated by Amazon.com:
They were drawn correctly
They were color coded
There was a tab selected when you enter the site.
Obviously, he provides details to each of these bullet items in the book (I won't plagerize him here). The book is definitely worth a look if you want guidelines for creating web sites for novices and experts alike.
Tabs are becoming common place enough that I wouldn't worry about using them, as long as you implement them correctly. Make sure that you make the active tab visually distinct from the other tabs.
Also, try to create the tabs using progressive enhancement so that the content is still there with JavaScript disabled. There are two main ways of doing this:
Load every tab but the first using
AJAX. The tabs themselves should be
links to the content that the AJAX
fetches.
Keep all of your information on the
page, but hide it using JavaScript.
When you cycle through the tabs,
they are populated from the hidden
parts of the page.
A design resource you might find helpful is the YUI Design Pattern Library and their section on tabs.
I think as long as the tabs are visible as such it's understandable by the user. I have seen websites where they present a vertical bar with links that act like tabs but it's not immediately visible to the user and found that very confusing.
I would have to disagree with those are in favor of tabs. In a design test we did for a fairly high-traffic website (over 1mil uniques at the time), we found that tabs have not been used. Tabs were clearly marked, located to the right of the main content area. Based on that experience I would suggest either finding an alternative or, as staticscan suggested run usability tests to figure out which ones work.
Don't think you can decide a-priori what is usable and what isn't. Do usability testing
"It takes only five users to uncover 80 percent of high-level usability problems" Jakob Nielsen
Google usability testing and start learning. It's not hard.
I tend to agree with lothar and ricebowl - people seem pretty familiar with it these days. The most important thing with any GUI element is clarity - the user must innately know what will happen when they press something (they know that clicking an inactive tab will make it active); and in navigation - it must be very clear exactly which tab they are currently on. As lothar said, if it's not immediately visible to the user, it's very confusing. If you address those issues, then it should be fine.
Just wanted to note SmashingMagazine has a new article showcasing tabs: Showcase of Tabs
I think people are used to the metaphor (from binders, or card-indexes and so forth) of tabs. Especially those that use the web for any length of time. I think that, if IE's adopted a metaphor, it implies a common familiarity with that metaphor.
So, no, I'd suggest that they're not confusing and suggest that you go for it. Just, maybe, post a welcome/first-time introduction (or a prominent 'help' link to such an intro) to the use of the tabs.
I've been a developer for an intranet app that used a tabbed interface, generated with HTML and controlled by JavaScript. This was way before IE7 and Firefox. In fact, it was a bit of a novelty on websites in general, too.
Fortunately, a previous developer had discovered that if you made it look like a dialog box - even down to using a grey background, then people usually understood the metaphor. We also loaded all the content for all the tabs in the initial page-load, and had the Save/Cancel buttons outside the tabbed structure. Because of this, most people immediately understood that they could move between tabs (we used JavaScript to hide and show the DIVs) and a Save would save changes to all of them.
If you want to deviate from such an obvious metaphor, then you need to do some usability studies.
A well implemented Tab interface should not confuse users.
In line with what others have said one of the most ipmortant things to consider with Tabs, or any other navigation interface is for it to be obvious where they currently are in the navigation scheme.
Another important point is not to break the browser! Many AJAX or javascript implemtations break the back button. This is a minor annoyance to some and a major inconvieniece to others. Make sure to consider your target audience here.
Personaly I prefer the oldschool method of not preloading all of the tabs but having each tab as its own page and using a templating methodology to manage the navigation interface, be it tabbled or otherwise. This maintains the browser history and works fine with or without javascipt.
Tabs, etc are just tools. How we decide to lay them out and use them is what determines their effectiveness.
What I try to keep in mind is:
1) Keep it close. The things we use the most should be on the front or up close to the top as much as possible and bury the rest based on how often they are used/adjusted.
2) Easy enough for Mom to use. All interfaces are confusing if they are not laid out in a clear and logical manner.
3) Organize how it's used, not how you think it makes sense.* I often use tabs to break up steps in a process, or to break up areas such as basic / advanced options. I group them based on similarity or usage depending on what works better
4) Keep them few Either way I try to stay below the 7-10 range tops as the human brain has a hard time jumping beyond 7-10 digits, so I assume the same for pieces of information. Vertical Accordians might be something you want to look into as well.
I have also embedded tabs within tabs before. Works well but only one layer deep most of the time.