Kitsite - Content management usability

Content management usability
by Michael Kowalski
Usability is often overlooked during CMS evaluation, because it can be difficult to evaluate. Yet usability is a key factor contributing to project success, cost of ownership and user satisfaction.

Some years ago I joined the web development team at the Guardian newspaper just as they were about to launch their new network of websites under the “Guardian Unlimited” brand. The content management solution was built on a Vignette StoryServer platform: our team developed a suite of editorial tools that allowed journalists to input and edit content.

The core of the Guardian’s content offering naturally originated with articles written for the newspaper. Every night articles were extracted from Quark Xpress and piped into the CMS, where a team of web staff set about proofing, cross-linking, repurposing and otherwise readying them for web publication.

The network launched not too far behind schedule, and to great success, soon picking up a slew of awards and one of the largest audiences of any UK news site. But behind the scenes there was a problem. The web production process was so convoluted and time-consuming that the web edition wasn’t able to launch until 3am at the earliest. There was a cost to this in cash terms—overtime fees to staff—but there was also a cost in terms of staff morale: many of the editorial staff became frankly rebellious.

The problem: poor usability. The editorial tools had been constructed by a disparate group of developers in whatever idiosyncratic style they liked. There was no consistency, and there had been no significant user testing.

Without changing the underlying architecture, I redeveloped the user interface, giving it a consistent look-and-feel, consistent labelling and behaviour, and replacing cumbersome forms-based interfaces with WYSIWYG tools. With these usability improvements, it became possible to publish the online edition of the newspaper by midnight.

Benefits of usability
Usability brings significant and tangible benefits to a content management system.

There is a direct impact on cost of ownership. Strong usability:

• reduces learning curves and therefore staff costs,

• reduces help desk support costs, and

• increases staff productivity by minimising the time it takes them to perform their jobs.

Usability enables distributed authorship, one of the promises of content management. The more usable the CMS, the greater the chance you can give people throughout your organisation direct control over their own content, or even source content from outside your organisation.

Finally, good usability reduces user hostility to change. Rolling out a CMS usually involves a fair amount of organisational change, and inevitably some users will resent abandoning their traditional way of working. You can’t solve this problem with usability, but you can mitigate it.

Poor usability is common in CMS
With all these clear benefits, you would expect usability to be one of the key drivers motivating adoption of a content management solution. Here’s the bad news: the standard of usability of content management systems is generally very poor.

Why is that? There are two key reasons.

CMS usability is hard
First, CMS usability is hard. Content management systems are inherently complex applications—in fact, they are more like suites of applications, taking in a wide range of tasks covering everything from user administration and template design to content authoring and deployment. They are used by a wide range of users with different roles, some technical, some not. And they have to make large amounts of content of various kinds both manageable and navigable.

Also, many CMS products have web-based interfaces, both to fulfil the objective of “any time, any place” authoring, and to reduce desktop support costs. But web interfaces are immature and present particularly difficult challenges to application designers because of the reduced functionality available to applications running inside the browser. And web interfaces are evolving rapidly. Some CMS products will have evolved from “traditional”—and cumbersome—forms-based interfaces.

CMS usability is difficult to evaluate
Second, evaluating usability is difficult. Buyers often have little idea how to go about testing it.

• You might find you have limited opportunity to give the product a proper test drive

• You can easily be overwhelmed by the extensive feature set of most CMS products

• You have to consider usability from the perspective of a range of different roles

• The metrics to use in CMS usability evaluation are not clear cut.

The difficulty of evaluating CMS usability means vendors can get away with avoiding the difficulty of implementing good usability in the first place.

The principles
Even an entirely web-based CMS is not a website, it’s an application. The basic principle of usability design remains the same however: it’s all about respecting the user experience. This means paying attention to things like:

• Familiarity
• Consistency
• Simplicity
• Error tolerance

By familiarity I mean that the interface should follow standard user interface conventions where possible. It ought to look and behave like other applications (or operating systems) that users already understand.

Performing an evaluation
Make usability evaluation a separate exercise from evaluating the product feature set and its technical suitability for your requirements.

Don’t settle for a demo. Before a product even makes your long list, make sure you’ve taken it for a test drive, with your hands on the wheel, not the vendor’s.

It’s unlikely that the content types defined in a demo installation will match your own content. Nevertheless, try and work through real use cases from your organisation, rather than testing product features in a general way.

Think about the basic principles of good interface usability I outlined above and consider how well the product conforms with them.

Ask yourself: can you perform simple tasks without training? If not, can you discover how to perform them without consulting the vendor?

Ask for references from other customers and follow them up.

On a project of any size, you should if at all possible run a pilot.

classloader OR “class Loading” introduction OR tutorial OR basics - Google Search

TWiki . Javapedia . Classloaders

Classloaders

Articles

* Internals of Java Class Loading
* Inside Class Loaders
* Inside Class Loaders: debugging
* Understanding Network Class loaders
* Understanding Class.forName
* Get a load of that name!
* Find a way out of the ClassLoader maze
* Create a custom Java 1.2-style classloader
* J2EE Classloading Demystified
* BEA WebLogic Server classloading
* Understanding J2EE Application Server Class Loading Architectures
* Advanced Classloading in J2EE
* Tyler Jewel’s article about EJB classloading schemes
* Class Loading in J2EE and Oracle9iAS Environments -PART II
* Classloading best practices
* Managing Component Dependencies Using ClassLoaders
* Websphere 6.1 classloaders

Open source projects

* http://classworlds.codehaus.org/ - a classloader framework
* http://which4j.dev.java.net/ - trouble shooting tool for “where am I getting this class from?” issue.

Romain Guy’s Weblog: Playing with Java, Swing and UI Design.

Swing Demos, Components and Designs
3D With Swing
This demo shows you how to mix Java3D and Swing with style.

Wait With Style in Swing
Learn how to create a nice looking, infinite progress indicator.

Drag With Style in Swing
Learn how to create a stylish drag n’ drop effect for components and pictures.

Search With Style in Swing
This demo shows a spotlight effect to highlight search results.

Shadowed Splash Screen
Learn how to add a shadow to a Swing splash screen.

WaveUI, Packed With Effects
WaveUI is an example of how cool a Swing application can look.

Dynamic Debugging With
Shows how to use Swing to help you graphically debug your Swing designs.

3D Splash Screen With Swing
Learn how to create a splash screen in 3D with Java3D and Swing.

A JNI Tale
An example of what JNI can do for you in Swing.

Swing in 3D
With a bit of painting code you can make a Swing application appear in 3D with stereo glasses.

Glass Pane Activator
This simple API let you enable, disable and stack glass panes on the fly by pressing a single key on your keyboard.

Drag n’ Splash
Shows a splash/rippled animation when you drop a file onto a window.

Wobbling Window
This demo shows a wobbling window. The window’s content is animated like a flag or a tablecloth. Uses OpenGL through the JOGL API.

Follow The Curves
This demo presents an animated login dialog created with Java2D.

Help Your Shelf
This demo presents an animated waiting dialog created with Java2D.

Flash Like Animations
This demo presents a Flash style animation.

Pretty Swing UI
A nice looking Swing UI built with Plastic LaF.

Translucent Menus
Learn how to create translucent menus in Tiger and Mustang.

Swing Glint
Create reflections for your pictures in Swing.

Jewel Case
Create a realistic plastic CD case with Java2D.

Non Rectangular Drop Shadows
How to create drop shadows for any picture with an alpha channel.

A Music Shelf with Java2D
A realistic looking CD shelf with reflections and 3D animations.

Blown Away
Exposé-like effect for dialogs.

Real World Physics
Use real world physics to add visual animated feedback to your UI.

Drag and Drop Effects Part 1
Use advanced rendering techniques and animations to provide better drag and drop visual feedback.

Drag and Drop Effects Part 2 (Almost)
Use advanced rendering techniques and animations to provide better drag and drop visual feedback.

Drag and Drop Effects, The End
Use advanced rendering techniques and animations to provide better drag and drop visual feedback.

A Button With a 3D Icon
Using OpenGL and Swing to create an animated 3D icon for JButtons.

Twinkle, an OpenGL/Swing Photo Viewer
Using OpenGL and Swing to create a modern and innovative user interface.

Fuse/Swing Demo
How to use Fuse project resource injection to create nice looking UIs.

Splines and Graph
A spline editor and a graph display, using animations and SwingX.

SwingX Painters
Create stunning visuals with just a few lines of code thanks to SwingX painters.

More on Painters
Learn how to create advanced visual effects with SwingX painters.

Aerith, a stunning Swing applications
Aerith showcases a wonderful looking Swing UI that mixes advanced 2D rendering, 3D components and many animations.

New blending modes for Java2D
Where I talk about AlphaComposites and the need for new Composite implementations. This entry contains 32 new composites for Java2D.

Aerith Hi-Def Videos
Large resolution videos of Aerith running on Mac OS X. Shows all the animations and 3D effects.

Extreme GUI Makeover 2006 Videos
Large resolution videos of Extreme GUI Makeover 2006.

Simple Tools with Great UI
A simple tool sporting a very nice UI.

Special Effects with SwingX
Helper classes to easily create advanced graphical effects.

Swing Team
Meet the Swing Team, Part 1
Photos of some members of the Swing Team.

Meet the Swing Team, Part 2
Photos of some other members of the Swing Team.

Web Design and Effects
Browser-Generated Reflections for Pictures
Creating reflections for any picture in a browser by using the canvas element.

On UI Design
The Future of Source Code Editing
Thinking about our future as developers.

Using Games Development for UI?
Thoughts about what games could bring to classical UI design.

Every UI Designer Should…
Why should every UI designer buy and play with a Nintendo DS.

Rants
I Plead Guilty
Every time I code in Java, I feel guilty… discover why.

Stunning Applications
Delicious Library
Delicious Library helps you manage your books, CDs, DVDs and games collections.

NewsFire
NewsFire is an impressive RSS reader.

Glass Engine
An innovative way to seek for information.

Imagery
Imagery is a Swing application with an impressive design.

Quartz Composer
Quartz Composer is a fun and cool looking application you can use to create Quartz scenes on MacOS X.

Lightzone
Lightzone is an innovative, Java/Swing based photographs editing tool. Well worth the look and the try!

Disco
Disco a Mac OS X CD burning application sporting a wonderful good-looking and easy to use user interface. A must see.

Romain Guy’s Weblog: Playing with Java, Swing and UI Design.

You can run the WebStart demo or, as usual, download its source code.

Ok, this is not a really innovative effect but I wanted to implement it since I first saw the java.awt.Robot class. It took me years but I finally made it Anyway, the ShadowedWindow class lets you display a splash screen with a shadow beneath. The shadow appears to be cast on your desktop. The trick, as you may know, is to grab a part of the screen with Robot and to draw the splash screen upon the capture. This approach is easy to implement and quite efficient but you don’t want to use it when your splash screen remains a long time on the screen. Since a “screenshot” is performed, the splash cannot reflect the changes happening behind it.

Go state-of-the-art with IFrame

The IFrame is an application window architecture that allows custom colors, custom borders, custom shapes, custom components, and even transparency. With IFrame, you can get rid of that boring old JFrame you use everywhere in your applications. In this article, IT Specialist Michael Abernethy introduces you to the IFrame class and shows you how you can use it to transform your standard JFrame application windows into state-of-the-art IFrames in no time.

Since the days of Java 1.0, UI developers have been searching for a way to customize their application windows. With the introduction of Swing, the problem was exacerbated, because developers could create the most sophisticated, advanced widgets with an amazing look and feel, but were constrained by the Frame or JFrame that contained it and its OS-specific look. How often have you seen an application that looks good inside the frame’s borders, but that the blue Microsoft Windows title bar just doesn’t match? Even worse, the application has a 1970s-looking Motif look and feel, but uses the smooth gradient colors of a Microsoft Windows title bar.

java.net Forums : WebBrowser is not initializing properly …

WebBrowser is not initializing properly

Swing - Semi-transparent JFrame

Semi-transparent JFrame

Fisheye Menus

The applet on the left shows our fisheye menu, as well as the three most common mechanisms currently used to select from a long list: arrows to scroll the list, a scrollbar to scroll the list, and hierarchical organization.

The fisheye menu is designed to be self-explanatory. All of the items are visible, and can be accessed by moving the mouse. No mouse clicks are necessary for navigation. Because there are so many items, a small mouse motion will move to the next item, so a focus lock mode has been implemented which lets you select items near the focus more easily. Move the mouse on the right side of the fisheye menu to enter focus lock mode, or on the left side for regular fisheye mode.

We expect that the fisheye menu is nearly as efficient as the hierarchical menu for directed tasks (where you know what you are looking for), but much better for browsing tasks.

aQute | Code / Bnd

Bnd file format

The bnd format is very similar to the manifest. Though it is read with the Properties class, you can actually use the ‘:’ as separator to make it look more like a manifest file. The only thing you should be aware of is that the line contination method of the Manifest (a space as the first character on the line) is not supported. Line continuations are indicated with the backslash (’\’ \u005C) as the last character of the line. Lines may have any length. White spaces around the key and value are trimmed. See Properties for more information about the format.