DPL talk:Manual - DPL Special Page with Parameters
From FollowTheScore
User-friendliness
This page isn't very user-friendly. Why not use select/dropdown/pulldown and multi-select lists, checkboxes, and limited text input fields instead of throwing everything into cluttered textareas that don't even fill the entire screen? Sure doesn't make me want to use DPL... -Eep² 05:36, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
- Indeed the special page doesn´t look very nice in its current state. The current version is only a rudimentary prototype - see the discussion in DPL:Requests for new features. I still hope that somebody might want to build a nice user interface - the functionality under the hood is all there. Gero 12:02, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
- Well, no offense, but why don't you, since you wrote it and know it best? It's not that hard to design a better UI for it but you're going to seriously need to "dumb it down" for average users to even think about using DPL. I was all excited when I initially saw what it could do but then immediately turned off by how to get it do it. :/ For example, instead of requiring the user to know which categories, namespaces, sections, templates, headings, etc, etc, there are, go out and search for them and bring them up for the user to select from. Use existing extensions like mw:Extensions:CategoryTree or even DPL itself, if you have to, but it's doable and would make using DPL a lot easier and more user-friendlier. And, when a template is selected, bring up a list of fields in them and don't make the user try and remember them and/or have to go hunt down their exact spelling.
- Stuff like "notcategory" and other "not" modifiers/parameters/variables (whatever--can you tell I'm not a coder?), use a checkbox with a header of "!" (for "not") or something (with an acronym tooltip explaining that "!" = "not" for the non-programmers, who DPL is supposedly for...). Tip: non-programmers don't like to enter text...and DPL requires a lot of text-entry!
- Lose the "true"/"false" gunk and just use checkboxes to en-/disable things.
- Use hidden CSS (you might want to set up the Wikipedia interwiki link) <div>s that appear for multiple parameters (like the "not*" ones).
- Make the table containing the textareas 100% wide (I override it with a stylesheet rewriter).
- The table syntax in the "listseparators" wouldn't require so many linefeeds if you used the double !! and || method to separate cells.
- Well, no offense, but why don't you, since you wrote it and know it best? It's not that hard to design a better UI for it but you're going to seriously need to "dumb it down" for average users to even think about using DPL. I was all excited when I initially saw what it could do but then immediately turned off by how to get it do it. :/ For example, instead of requiring the user to know which categories, namespaces, sections, templates, headings, etc, etc, there are, go out and search for them and bring them up for the user to select from. Use existing extensions like mw:Extensions:CategoryTree or even DPL itself, if you have to, but it's doable and would make using DPL a lot easier and more user-friendlier. And, when a template is selected, bring up a list of fields in them and don't make the user try and remember them and/or have to go hunt down their exact spelling.
- These are just a few but I think these would cut down on DPL's frustration at least 50%. -Eep² 12:57, 24 July 2007 (CEST)
