Archives for category: Uncategorized

we need more people!

September 28, 11 //
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Front End Developer – HTML, CSS & jQuery

Full time - Salary consummate with experience

The opportunity:
Become one of the clever kids at Niche Studio using your excellent front end development skills. We are located in vibrant West End and have a friendly team who respect each other, our clients and our work. We love what we do, which is clever design and digital. We have a solid set of systems and processes allowing you to focus on what you do best. Niche are evolving as a business and the future looks bright!The role:
This role will provide you with a great opportunity to showcase your front end skills and the opportunity to work with an experienced and supportive web team.

Ideally you will have:

  • Experience in roles that have had a focus in front end development.
  • Strong skills in cutting a design using Adobe Illustrator and/or Photoshop.
  • Strong HTML & CSS coding (knowledge of HTML 5 and CSS 3 would be great for future projects).
  • Strong ability in Javascript/jQuery/Ajax coding.
  • PHP and MySQL skills desirable but not essential.
  • Experience with open source systems such as WordPress and Joomla.

If this sounds like you and you want to join the clever kids at Niche we would love to hear from you. We want to see your mad CSS and javascript skills, so ensure you provide examples of live sites to show us what you can do.

email us your cv and examples to: work@nichestudio.com.au

We are motivated to get someone awesome on board, we look forward to introducing you to the clever kids behind good marketing.

Joomla Usability – List and Edit Layouts

June 4, 10 //
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List Views

The most troubling aspect of the Joomla interface is the icons in the top right of every view, there are now even more buttons than ever, all with inconstant actions, some do bulk actions (publish, archive, trash), some do single actions (new, edit), some go to random pages (options). Aside from the confusion, the sheer mouse distance travelled in some contexts is crazy. For example, you can click on the title of an item to edit it, but this is not obvious. What is obvious is to tick the check box and then mouse all the way up the top to then press the edit button!

The Fix

We need to move these items so they are in context. Please note this is shamelessly adapted from WordPress:
  • Put bulk actions at the bottom
  • Put context-sensitive menus on items for their specific tasks (edit and trash). Other tasks could be put here too, like archive, etc, but these are used so infrequently, it is logical to keep them in bulk only. Perhaps this can be configurable.
  • Put options in the tabbed menu and the dropdown menu
  • If desired Help COULD be made more context-sensitive.

Edit Article

The main issue in the layout is the use of the multi function icon area with all buttons the same size regardless of frequency or context. The other layout is set in a modular way but is simply too large, without items organised by use or context. I have borrowed heavily from wordpress for this interface

The Fix

Save button

The save button has been moved to above and below the item, yes the save button is dual funciton, which isn’t great, but it’s the best solution I have. Perhaps the other functions only appear on holding the mouse, a click will just save and close.

Alias and Title

The approach for the Alias and title made ot behave like wordpress. The alias would come up via AJAX as it is not commonly editing when creating items, if you do want to change it, clicking the button will immediately make it active, this feature should also be able to be changed in the configuration.

Other primary Functions

The controls for Publish and featured have been simplified to check boxes and category and langauge sperated for easy reading.

Sidebar

The titles and dropdowns in the sidebar have been organised one-under the other so that they are easier to read and more compact, the publishing options have also been made consistent with the rest of the redesign. The layout of Article options et al can easily be adjusted as logical to fit in this area. In particular, the Options would adopt a side by side rather than underneath layout