A bunch of ideas for improving Elgg's user experience

Copying the idea from the Ubuntu guys, I propose a Papercuts project. A paper cut is a trivially fixable usability bug that a user would encounter using a brand new installation of Elgg.

I have the first 15 ideas for it, please tell me if any of them has already been implemented or if they are not that trivial to solve:

  1. Show number of unread messages in a badge to the side of the envelope icon (Topbar)
    The rationale for this is that it is not the same to approach 2 messages than to approach 58.
  2. Change "Your Entities" label in Settings > Account Statistics to something more user friendly.
    Entities is correct from a developer's point of view, user's have no idea what an entity means.
  3. Do I really need to bookmark or report any of my settings or tools pages? Remove those items from the sidebar, because they serve no purpose there.
  4. Ability to delete my bookmarks.
  5. The Elgg Bookmarklet does not have a default title when I drag it to my Bookmarks bar. I believe it should read "Bookmark this on [name of site]"
  6. Clicking on the little avatar in the Topbar to go to my profile is not obvious. I think you should display the user's name next to it.
  7. Use Gravatar to retrieve new user avatar based on his/her email address and use a face silhouette as default image if you can't instead of the colorful faces (which are not particularly beautiful, dare I say)
  8. Standardize icon styles.
    Right now there is a mess with all the different types of icons, I believe we should go for a clean, one-color style that works well with most themes.
  9. The "Add/Remove editor" link in every compose screen (whenever you write anything) should be smaller and say "Toggle visual editor on/off"
  10. "Topic status" and "Access" in compose screens should be put inside an "Advanced options" div that can be toggled on/off via jQuery.
    Regular users will find this options distracting and confusing. Hide them away.
  11. Move Tags in compose screens below "Topic message" (they are not that important) and state clearly if you want them separated by commas or just spaces.
  12. Labels in compose screens have different sizes. Go with the smaller one.
  13. The ElggRelease and ElggVersion meta tags in the HTML head present a security risk and I believe they don't bring any benefits.
  14. Some pages have a jQuery call that doesn't do anything. It just asks if the DOM is ready.
  15. There are HTML tables used for presentational purposes in the footer. Get rid of them and use CSS.
Please add your own ones.

 

  • 16. Wrong parsing of urls in the profile's message board? This is what I got using the community site:

    Check this out: http://bit.ly/7pUZRa" style = "text-decoration: underline; " >http://bit.ly/7pUZRa

  • 17. Why do I have a link for profile in the list below a user's image if I am already in his/her profile.

  • 1) Show number of unread messages in a badge to the side of the envelope icon (Topbar)

    The rationale for this is that it is not the same to approach 2 messages than to approach 58.

    Already done! I think this is standard now and if not then it was done with a plugin.

  • My comments in bold. If you'd like to submit patches for any of these, Elgg's bug tracker is here: http://trac.elgg.org/elgg

    1. Show number of unread messages in a badge to the side of the envelope icon (Topbar)
      It already does this
    2. Change "Your Entities" label in Settings > Account Statistics to something more user friendly.
      Agree
    3. Do I really need to bookmark or report any of my settings or tools pages? Remove those items from the sidebar, because they serve no purpose there. It's generic code. There would need to be special cases to remove that.
    4. Ability to delete my bookmarks. Already there
    5. The Elgg Bookmarklet does not have a default title when I drag it to my Bookmarks bar. I believe it should read "Bookmark this on [name of site]" It does have a site title by default
    6. Clicking on the little avatar in the Topbar to go to my profile is not obvious. I think you should display the user's name next to it.
    7. Use Gravatar to retrieve new user avatar based on his/her email address and use a face silhouette as default image if you can't instead of the colorful faces (which are not particularly beautiful, dare I say) I think you are confusing this site with the standard elgg install. Elgg has a silhouette as default.
    8. Standardize icon styles.
      Right now there is a mess with all the different types of icons, I believe we should go for a clean, one-color style that works well with most themes.
    9. The "Add/Remove editor" link in every compose screen (whenever you write anything) should be smaller and say "Toggle visual editor on/off"
    10. "Topic status" and "Access" in compose screens should be put inside an "Advanced options" div that can be toggled on/off via jQuery.
      Regular users will find this options distracting and confusing. Hide them away.
    11. Move Tags in compose screens below "Topic message" (they are not that important) and state clearly if you want them separated by commas or just spaces.
    12. Labels in compose screens have different sizes. Go with the smaller one. Need more details
    13. The ElggRelease and ElggVersion meta tags in the HTML head present a security risk and I believe they don't bring any benefits.
    14. Some pages have a jQuery call that doesn't do anything. It just asks if the DOM is ready. I think that was put in there as a temporary work around some bug.
    15. There are HTML tables used for presentational purposes in the footer. Get rid of them and use CSS. Agreed
  • @Cash You are right. I don't have an Elgg install at hand right now so I couldn't remember exactly how it behaved. That's why I used the community site to find some of these bugs.

    Regarding the different bugs:

    3) Is it possible to solve this without much rework?

    4) The bookmarks thing confuses me. You click on the title and you are taken to an intermediate page. I think the title should point to the bookmark URL and have a separate Details or Comments link instead of the Visit Resource

    12) To reproduce this go to the Add a topic screen in the discussions of any group. The label Topic message is bigger than Title for example.

  • 3) I'd probably create a custom left sidebar for the settings page to remove those. It wouldn't be that much work, but it would be a special exception.

    4) Agree on that. I have changed that on my version of Elgg.

    12) Just checked this with Firebug and they seem to be the same. Is this a browser issue?

  • 12) Seems to be a browser issue. It looks okay in Firefox 3.5 but not in Chrome 3.

  • 18. "Edit profile icon" should read "Edit profile picture"

    19. Group title in "Group membership" widget should be clickable. At the moment only the image is.

    Will start filling bug reports next week If I have time. 

  • 13) elggversion -> doesn't technically present a security risk, except that it does make the site more easily identifiable to bot code as being elgg and thus acts as an attractor to hackers and spammers.. essentially it most likely increases the amount of spammers that the site has to deal with - either successfully using anti spam methods or unsuccessfully.. i'd prefer that these 2 metatags were removed.

Feedback and Planning

Feedback and Planning

Discussions about the past, present, and future of Elgg and this community site.