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Revision of the Main Menu

1 Description

The current main menu consisting of the menu entries

Personal Desktop | Repository | Search | Mail | Administration

shall be revised. Search and Mail are offered right on top as general services, while Personal Desktop and Repository (and Administration for administrators) are considered as the main menu entries:

Personal Desktop | Repository | Administration

Additional main menu entries can be added by using the user interface plugin slot.

2 Status

• Scheduled for Release: Release 4.2
• Funding: Partly funded by Hochschule Bremen as part of the e-portfolio introduction and its necessary Revision of the Personal Desktop.
• Development: Feature is to be developed by Alexander Killing, Leifos

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Alexander Killing

4 Discussion

Matthias Kunkel, 31 May 2011: Some comments to the current implementation at www.ilias.de/test42:

• When entering the Administration the first time (new installation) it is not clear where to make the basic settings. In ILIAS 4.1, the "General Settings" were easier to find then in 4.2. Now, General Settings seems to be a submenu of Administration like others (but it is handled differently in the breadcrumbs...)

Pascal, 28.06.11
I just had a look at the actual SVN Version of ILIAS 3.2.0 (Alpha3) an the implementation of the main menu.
I see several problems with this implementation:

• The naming within "Personals Desktop" is not so easy to understand. What is the difference between "settings" and "personal data"? Personaly I don't like the mails in this menu because they have nothing to do with my desktop.
• The Submenus are to long, especially "Administration". Alltough the are sorted A-Z it's hard to find the entry I look for. The website www.sbb.ch maybe has a solution for this.
• Repository: This is still a dirty hack for me. There is this "Main Page" entry followed by the last "visited entries". I would never look for them ("visited entries") at this place. The Titel "Repository" lets me estimate a menu with entries out of the repository itself.
• The Search-Function should by available without an extra click. It's not about the click itself it's about the hiding of this very important feature.
• The Mail-Icon followed by the number of new mails is to small. I suggest to write "You have x unread mails" or "x unread mails"

Personaly I think this solution is worse then the old one. Because its a real big change I propose to make a test with real users or at least a expert review with a handfull of experts.

Alex 9 Jul 2011 (in reponse to Pascal)

• Administration Drop Down: Yes, a grouping is definitely needed here. Any concrete lists of subgroups are welcome.
• Search: Our current preference is to have the input fields always displayed, "on focus" a drop down with the "Last search results" and "Advanced Search" features and if anything longer than three characters has been entered: the list of suggested search terms.
• Settings vs. Personal Data: Personally I am quite happy of the quick access of the settings in this solution. It was a nightmare in 4.1. For me the terms are also specific enough. Any improved naming is appreciated.
• Mails under Personal Desktop: The main point with this ("draft") decision was that ILIAS is not a mail system and there is no reason that this feature gets an extra main menu entry, compared with other features under the personal desktop context. The notification on new mails was one reason, why at least some information must stay in the header area (the number of new mails). The presentation of this information is a second discussion. Any ideas are welcome. Personally I think additional text makes it only more cluttered. I attach some screenshots of other popular web apps.
• Repository vs. Last Visited: The last visited feature always had a relation to repository items (which was not clear in its old position). The solution now is very close to the "recently opened" feature in the "files" menu of many desktop applications (like word). So this is not an uncommon concept.

Because its a real big change we made this a topic at the last dev conf and we invited everyone to helpt to work out solutions. From now on it is less than two months that are left. I hope that we get more feedback on this. I will put it on the next JF agenda, to keep people aware of it.

Marcel Lopin, FH Dortmund, 11.07.2011

Ich wollte nur kurz anmerken, aus unserer Sicht würde es Sinn machen dass unter 'Zuletzt besucht' auch noch das entsprechende Objekt-Icon angezeigt wird. Bei uns kommt es häufiger vor das Kurs und übergeordnete Kategorie sehr ähnlich oder identisch benannt sind. In diesen Fällen wäre das zusätzliche Objekt-Icon eine deutliche Verbesserung.

Pascal, 11.07.11
For me, some entries in the "personal desktop" menu are not related to a desktop. Can we maybe found a better name for this menu? If its called "my Content" "my ILIAS" or something in this way, I'm absolutly agree with integrating Mails and all the other stuff to this menu.
I'm still thinking about the other points of the discussion...

Pascal, 11.07.11

Here my request for comment concerning the menu "personal desktop" in ILIAS 4.2
Rename "personal desktop" to "My ILIAS", reorder and group the menu.
The groups are ordered but I did not think about the perfect order of the entries within a group yet.

Personal Desktop
News
---
Skills
Portfolio
Learning Progress
My Workspace
Notes and Comments
---
Mail
Calendar
Contacts
Bookmarks
----
Personal Data
Settings

2011-07-11 ILIAS_LM:

@Pascal: I really really like it! (And we don't agree often... ;-)
Now in 4.2 (status quo) I am searching for hours because of the long list of entries. But in those themed groups (According to me they are grouped well, even if I'd prefer another order within the groups.) I'll realize sooner where my wanted entry could be. Simple solution, but a grand difference for a mind. Great.
If it's technically possible I'd like real gaps or at least a kind of visual differerence (e.g. colours) between the grouped entries.

Anyway: Thanks for posting your idea.

Pascal, 13.07.11
Here an optical representation of my proposal

Alex K., 13 Jul 2011:

• I would make "my Workspace" the first one in the second group.
• "my ILIAS" is not my favorite term, but I would not have a better one if "Personal Desktop" is used this way.
• I think it could be an improvement if a "My Courses and Groups" link would be present in the first group.
• On the last JF we decided to separate notes/comments more within the system. I wonder if it would be good to make a merger of News and Comments as an "Activity Stream". But this would not be a 4.2 discussion...

JF 18 Jul 2011:

• We would like to keep "Personal Data", "Settings" and "Mail" as separate entries.
• We would like to group the administration drop down. Any suggestions are highly appreciated.
• We would like to keep the "Last Visited" items under "Repository". We agree that icons should be added and we would like to improve the presentation.
• The current search input solution is still missing the "Last visited/Advanced Search" drop down when it gets the focus. This will be implemented.
• We would not like to add additional text concerning the new mails, we will add a number over the mail icon, like in facebook.
• We would like to get rid of the "Logged in as" text and keep just the name and the "Logout" link. We also would like to add a user icon in this area. (Like in Google+)
• We agree that a grouping in the first menu is necessary, our current preference (still called "Personal Desktop"):
  • Favourites (fka Selected Items)
  • My Courses & Groups
  • Bookmarks
  • Notes & Comments
  • News
  • -----------
  • My Workspace
  • Portfolio
  • Skills
  • Learning Progress
  • -----------
  • Calendar
  • Mail
  • Contacts
  • -----------
  • Personal Data
  • Settings

Pascal (in response to JF), 18.07.2011

• I agree with most of the proposals and try to make one for the admin menu.
• Question to "mail icon": Does that mean that the mail icon is always there, also where there are no new mails? If so -> "i Like"
• I still think that "magazin" and "personal desktop" have to be renamed but I don't have a good proposal at the moment

Florian Suittenpointner, 18.07.2011: Here is my suggestion for the Administration menu:

Pascal, 18.07.2011: Here is my suggestion for the Administration menu: My 2nd idea was to group the items, name the group, only show the groups in the main menu and then switch to the 2 col-layout as we know it now (only showing the items within the selected group). The problem is, even if we make groups in the menu, that there are to many entries.

Administration menu --- [user-related] --- User Accounts Authentication and Registration Tracking and Learning Progress --- [interface-related] --- Style and Layout Languages Personal Desktop Accessibility --- [authoring- and content-related] --- Advanced Editing Metadata Certificates Repository, Trash and Permissions Files & Folders Learning Resources Media Objects/Pools Mediacast Test and Assessment Survey --- [communication- and interaction-related] --- Search News and Web Feeds Mail Chat Server Tagging Calendar Payment --- [else] --- Roles Privacy and Security Software Third Party Software Modules, Services and Plugins

Administration menu --- [user-management] --- User Accounts Roles --- [object-related] --- Files & Folders Learning Resources (should be renamed to "Learning Modules") Media Objects/Pools Mediacast Test and Assessment Survey Chat Server (should be renamed to "Chat") Tagging Calendar --- [service-related?] --- Personal Desktop News and Web Feeds Mail Search Tagging Skill Management (should be renamed to "Skills") --- [external tools] --- Software Third Party Software Modules, Services and Plugins --- [system-settings] --- General settings Privacy and Security Authentication and Registration Style and Layout Languages (maybe integrate to general settings) Accessibility (maybe outsource to the setup) --- [adminview to objects] --- Repository, Trash and Permissions (can't this be integrated to the magazin?) Restored Objects --- [hmmmmmm] --- Payment Advanced Editing Metadata Certificates --- [2nd. hmmmmmm] --- Statistics and Learning Progress

Matthias Kunkel, 29 Aug 2011: Hello Pascal, I have some questions:

• The two missing administration sections Portfolio and Blog will be added to the [object-related] section?
• Tagging appears two times? Intended? Or accidentally?
• Is there a sorting within the blocks? It is not alphabetically but I do not see the rule.

Pascal, 30.08.11
I prefere the 2-column layout. The ordering is good for me in both examples. Maybe we have to think about moving some settings into the setup or rearange the content (ex. if you want to configure the search you have to go to two different setting-panels).

Kerstin, 2011-09-13
Some minor notes from me:
Will there still be a site anywhere where the administration menu is permanently rolled-out? I actually liked the old sidebar in the AdminGUI with a structure of what is available and the possibility of a direct jump. With the drop-down-solution the whole structure will be gone every time I choose an item. Furthermore it's one extra click everytime I'd like to jump into a different section of the AdminGUI. I'd expect to show the whole structur when I simply click on the breadcrumb "Administration". But the general settings show up there directly.

Same with Repository and Personal Desktop. It's one click more for every place I want to go to - even if I just want to jump to the root of the repository. As an ILIAS administrator this amounts to quite a lot of additional clicks compared to ILIAS 4.1. Even if those clicks are saved elsewhere through clever GUI I find this annoying already - and I'm just still fooling around on a test server without any user support (besides the fact that the formerly introduced action button makes for two more clicks already btw).

Concerning the personal desktop: The difference between "Overview" and "My Courses & Groups" is not easy to spot. All the blocks stay the same except for the middle block where "Selected Items" changes into memberships. I would merge these two items into $MyStuff (better name required) with the selected items on top (with maybe an option to hide them --> accordion?) and the memberships down below the list. The list of the selected items usually won't be very long and more often than not empty. Users will be more interested into their memberships than into selected items put on their desktop by well-intentioning admins...

I don't know if this makes it better or worse but I could imagine something like this: When clicking on the menu you not only get the revised drop-down menu but also automatically a default site is loaded. So you get two different things with one click. For personal desktop this default could be $MyStuff, for repository it's the root of the repository and for administration it could be the general settings or the whole tree of the adminGUI.

5 Follow-up