Menu / Features

I frequently notice that my end users get all caught up in the learning curve, and user interface. I understand that most users are not very talented in learning or computers.

So far i've been tackling this problem with the use of canvas_menu, but still not fully adopted by users.

Are there any suggestions or plans to work on menu systems in Elgg ?

Regards,
Uddhava dasa

  • I actually made tutorials (and have even had someone from this site go "gosh, love those, can I modify them for use?") and put them on a Help menu on the topbar.

    The problem is... people don't seem to see the word Help.

    My biggest frustration to date is that I have over a hundred people and most of them have not stuck around long enough to figure out how to use the site because it LOOKS difficult. Apparently. -.-

    It doesn't look difficult to me and I can't get to grips with the idea that it is, which makes it hard to fix it.

    The canvas menu has helped some. Now at least if they flail around madly they'll see familiar things like "Change avatar" and "Write a blog". But the majority on my site still don't have avatars. Adding the option onto the dashboard improved that dramatically... but plenty still don't!

    It's hugely frustrating. Especially since I have an IRC chat backend and if people would just click into it... they could ask.

    I even created a video tutorial. Unfortunately, I can't put it in a Page or a Blog because elgg won't let me embed video.

    But what's most frustrating is that most of these people have Facebook accounts.

    I recently tried out Facebook. I've been using the internet in general sincve 1992. Facebook confused the hell out of me. Things were hard to find. Not obviously labelled. The theme is ugly. Etc.

    Yet my pretty, uncluttered, centralised elgg site is "hard to use".

    Rant over. -.-

  • Okay, rant not over.

    I have a question. Have any of you had an issue with people -not seeing- the Edit Page button on the profiles?

    I have like 60 blank profiles. :| Many of them have pictures, or blogs, or other stuff, but no widgets!

  • @Ukr Programmer - I did develop a site for teenagers, but I'm not sure if "It's so easy, even a kid can use it!" is necessarily a good approach.  Kids can also quite easily navigate MySpace, which is a a UI nightmare. 

    @Shawn -- Elgg's views system is quite different than a standard PHP application.  It follows an extendable MVC model.  The documentation has some good info about this.  I know the learning curve with dev can be high on Elgg, but it's worth it!

  • I get complaints about the (left) menus sometimes too. E.g. in a group there is a "Group pages" and "Group disussion" to the left. But when selecting the "group pages" link the discussion link goes away. It's similar on other places too.

    I think the problem lies with mixing "all stuff related to this group" vs "mine/friends/others/all content within this plugin" in the menu. If the group is considered the  main thingie, then the menu must be constant here, preferably indicate what menu item is selected too.

  • How about creating an Elgg object "menu", in which plugins can add their options to that menu, and then the menu could have several views, like toolbar, etc.

    Many plugins have to use hardcoded URL's which makes it really bad for maintenance purposes.

    Regards,
    Uddhava dasa

  • Can you create a menu tool kit for the admin? position, link structure, etc.

    I would like to bring up my groups when I use the toolbar Tools>Groups instead of going to site groups.

    I like the menu toolbar, unobtrusive and neat. However that same like was the problem at the start because it is not the norm. It took me a few visits to first notice and then to remember it was there.

    Please dont destroy the nice celan feel elgg has but someone create a toolkit to give options.

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