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Hello everyone.
My name is Carlos Mauro Cardenas Fernandez. I am a participant GSOC Steffen Voß is my mentor and I will be participating in the project: Accessability Overhaul & Usability. I am studying systems engineering at the National University of Engineering from Peru. And here detail parts of my project so superficial. I am collecting information from both the documentation, forums and tracker on the usability of PostNuke. Some comments are very bold. I hope to have a good job in that project.

I hope many comments...

Usability & Accessability Overhaul

My motivation
I'm develop my thesis about the usability software and I want to join in the project and help with 'GSOC: Usability & Accessability Overhaul'. I know the theory about usability and test usability.

My critera to cover the project are:
* Recommendations of the mentors and community PostNuke.
* Use patterns and best practices recommended in Web usability like: W3C and WAI, YUI Patterns, WebDesign.
* Make a Template Quiz for the evaluation as module for Test Usability... If time permits.

The criteria for the evaluation usability are:
- Comparison of controls on Good Practices or patterns Usability on the Web.
- Include improvements within the Framework.
- Create a guide to improve and documenting findings to the community PostNuke.
- Other Projects :D... If they do so and improve copy.

Therefore the project will make based on the study of each graphical interface in the minimum instalation of PostNuke. Who versión?... i will use he .8 ...

Design goals
.1 Usability
To improve the usability of PostNuke i will work graphical interfaces suggested some of the modules and the framwork which are used in the forms. Attempts to put in these modules some good practices and standards for Web usability.
I will Work with what is necessary XHTML, CSS, Ajax whether it is possible to implement and methodically.

2 Accessibility and conformance
For the accessibility i take the the Guidelines and techniques. After the programing process. I will make a list for test usability. I will Choose 6 to 7 CMS users to test usability with the corrections.
The proceeds will help create iterations for each test.

3 Maintainability
Maintenance may accelerate taking intoaccount that at the end of the draft the conclusions will be made in the form of best practices for Web usability PostNuke. I will help in the incorporation and supporting of usability guide line in other modules PostNuke.

4 Module Test Usability -
I think it is necessary to support improvements in usability PostNuke creating a module for testing usability.

This assures us that the recommendations made help improve the usability of PostNuke.
Probably the need to collect data from the test usability need to implement a new module. A module that will have the following:
- Creation of Usability Test

My tools:
* Webserver (e.g. Apache)
* Database (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL or Oracle)
* PHP 5
* Latest version of PostNuke .8 ... :S
* Programming editor (either a comprehensive IDE like Eclipse with PDT or a text editor with syntax highlighting)

Planning Project
I sent the draft with a plan. Now I want to change it, especially since I read forums during these days and interest is very varied. I hope to finish the plan in 3 weeks, according to the requirements of users and developers more experienced PostNuke. So I hope input from the community.




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I belive in the love of the humans

Hello Carlos,

Welcome aboard! First, when you say minimum install of PN8 do you mean the .8 framework or do mean with Value Addons, or do you mean a minimal functional site (a site with a purpose)?

Usability can be very vague, so can you define it somewhat better.. Namely, usability for whom? The developer, the administrator, the end-user?

A major problem with managing usability now, is legacy and back-wards compatibility. This is a 'unusable dichotomy' we are faced with. We strive to allow users to upgrade thier core code with maintaining and supporting there third-party code and data. But also we like and want to integrate new technologies, practices, and standards. It can be quite difficult to do both these things. How are you going to approach the project in these terms?

I am also curious on how you plan to choose your candidates for your tests. The community here is diverse, how do you plan to test.. with a small sample group. Obviously, the test would strive to be objective.. but to me, it seems the results could become very subjective..

So here is some feedback, as I see it.

Also, if you need some help with areas of usability... I can offer some input, to any questions you may have. I communicate directly with the first time PostNuker all the way up to the lead devs.

Greeting and good luck!

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David Pahl
Zikula Support Team

Hi Carlos, welcome. You have a lot of ideas already, nice.

For me usability could be improved a lot with documentation. Inline documentation would help new admins a lot IMO. This information can be hidden by default and only made visible if the admin wants to see it. The new Tour module is a big step forward for new Users and Admins. The addition of Tour documentation to the various modules would be a step forward.

For the developer usability could be improved by providing more ways of creation of an "empty" module, where you can include your stuff. Different module templates (full module, based upon dbutil, objutil, module for encapsulating a block). There are some example modules already, but they are inside the NOC and not easy to find if you're not familiar with the NOC.
A template for Module documentation could be a nice addtion as well. If there is a template with at least the minimum, a developer might be tempted to fill in documentation.
A tool like ModuleStudio is great as well. documentation of the new technologies (categories, pnform, workflow, dbutil, objutil, Ajax) would really help in embracing these new technologies. If one doesn't know how to use the new stuff the easiest way is to use the old style.

For the end-users good default themes and a good admin explanation how to set up information that is only visible to the unregistrered first time user might help. Providing good and clean menu options to the admins/developers could help the end user in a better understanding of the site structure.
Providing ways to easily print pages and converting to pdf could also help in usability.

Just some ideas from a long time PN user/admin/developer.

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http://www.erikspaan.nl
http://www.avwijchen.nl

Involved in: BlankTheme, StoriesExt, Menu templates, SmugView, ValueAddon News and zikula.nl

--> As a site administrator a useful tool that would be great for virtually every module would be a bulk import/export system so in any module if you wanted to import many entries w/o having to submit the form 10 times. Personally, I would use phpMyAdmin for something like this but somebody more amateur would benefit from a module like this. I am not sure if this fits exactly in your mandate but it would definitely improve usability.

Well
reading this comments, seems to touch many development topics, but i guess that Carlos Mauro will focus his effort on usability tests, detect the problems and build some solutions in general.

IMO, the scope of that solutions are in the "surface" of the system; solutions like a set of centralized classes to improve the consistency of the modules look'n feel, some recomendations to the module developers about navigation and a lot of documentation work, more than go deep in the PN-techs, the usability test are in the visible part, our daily interface, not too much code.

Mauro:
After RC3, i've introduced a set of CSS classes to be used in the module Forms (in the /javascript/style.css file) and used them in the News module UI improvement.
I guess that's the first approach to have a complete and flexible set of classes to use in every module, for consistency in the forms and the front end interface.

We can also override them from the theme, and make the site customization too much easier!

Finally, i recommend you to use Eclipse PDT (i love it) with the Aptana plugin,
to work the templates and the CSS files.
Will be even better with your GNU/Linux based workstation

BTW, the FLISOL was a success here in my university.
More than 300 participants and more than 50 computers released!
See ya!

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- Mateo T. -
Mis principios... son mis fines

Hi friends..

After read the documentation (I still lack enough).

I am reviewing the forums yet I dare not respond, there are many suggestions.

For my project, I will:

- Put in a gallery of images all displays of PostNuke 0.8. To make an assessment by the community that likes to screen or not? And focus my work.
- Continue to review the documentation PostNuke
- Search for projects related to CMS and usability.
- Make a benchmarking for PostNuke CMS.
- Find methods to measure the usability on the web.
- Sent email to the Daily Post Nuke community about my progress and my blog.
- To invite know about the assessment of usability and accessibility of PostNuke by post blog on slashdot, digg, an other.
- Make a Grantt to MSProject for this.
- Make a good project with best practice PMI:
-- Minutes of initiatives
-- Project scope
-- Plan Project
-- Implementation of the project
-- Monitoring and Control
-- Closing

Aside:
-- I am doing a job for my course of audit system. I do and I proposed in the draft audit on PostNuke. PostNuke may do a letter for my teacher?

PD1: PostNuke in the Community will have a module for Gallery Images
PD2: I wonder will be inscribed into MailList Development?

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I belive in the love of the humans

unimauro

I am reviewing the forums yet I dare not respond

LOL... I think you're brave for even taking this on. Accessibility can be/is defined by standards, but usability is such a personal experience. Personally I like the usability of a BMW but others prefer Cadillacs... etc. for every preferred car make/model.

I'd like to think that accessibility would equate to usability.


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Under Construction!

I am going to focus on the key modules of the project. Not only in the Tour of the CORE. I have also drawn some on the screen version 0.8 [7] which was analysed to get my list of bugs usability. I almost finished and passage of 50 points.
The project is in 4 part: user, administration and installation and themes.
I think the latter is important because it would encourage more try and I think this discontinued.
Something that is sure to cause controversy I would like to change the administration interface to make it more friendly.

Some Link about this...

http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Guidelines Book Usability
Maximum Accessibility Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone
Prioritizing Web Usability--Jakob Nielsen & Hoa Loranger
Luke Wroblewski. Site-Seeing - A Visual Approach To Web Usability
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/
Criteria For Evaluating Usability Evaluation Methods
Bechmarking CMS http://www.opensourcecms.com/
Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities
http://picasaweb.google.c...uke08Rc4Administracion
http://picasaweb.google.c...o/PostNuke08Rc4Usuario
http://picasaweb.google.c...stNuke08Rc4Instalacion


http://gsoc.uniestudia.or...GSoC2008.Planning.html <--- Planning



edited by: unimauro, Jun 01, 2008 - 06:46 PM

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I belive in the love of the humans

another interesting (and important) link: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/

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regards from germany
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