Issues with new layout designer

[Bluebell]

Hi guys,
After using the new editor for a while i have somehow started to miss the old one.
I like the new features in the new layout designer but using it is simply not too easy.
New designer has way too many windows and the functionality of these windows aren’t very clear or simple to understand. I am very much hoping there will be changes which will make the designer more user friendly and more functional.

1. Adding and editing text is pretty difficult and text is not behaving as expected. If i just add a line of text with an effect and move the text to the middle of my view, text is not moving to the middle, it is still shown on top (no space on top). Adding an effect to the text makes the text shown with gap, it first shows only the background for way too long and after that the text with the effect. I have tried to adjust the effect but still not satisfying.

2. Preview takes too long to see once there is an mp4 video on timeline

3. Big problems with hints: whenever i move mouse from widget to another, it shows pop-up hints and these hints keeps visible while they should go away after moving the mouse to another location or widget (please see the attached image).
   

   

4. Widget names on timeline: the names of the widgets are only partly visible (please see the attached image).
   

   

5. When i create a new layout, i expect it to be ready to edit but designer does create the layout as read only which requires checkout first.

6. When i add a clock widget and set it as “Light” it is still shown as “dark”

7. adding widgets to the layout: First you click the “+” and than click the timeline to add an image which brings up the library. After this you have to again click “+” for the media and click back the timeline in order to get the media to the timeline. This is not logical IMO and too many clicks required. This should simply work like: You click to add image which brings the library or upload, and once you click the media from the library or upload, it goes to the timeline without any extra clicks.

I am using 2.0.3 and my browser is the latest Firefox.

Thanks!

[natasha]

Thank you for providing such detailed feedback.

We will take a deeper look at the points you have highlighted and get back to you.

Thank you once again!

[Bluebell]

Thanks Natasha!

[jschoenstein]

I would like to second BlueBell’s complaints. A user deleted a region and it took me a half hour to re-create it. In the old designer it would have been 30 seconds. Also, there should be a Cancel button on the designer along with a publish button. If a user did make a mistake, it would be nice to cancel out (or undo) and start over.

[natasha]

Thank you for your feedback.

There is an undo button on the Layout Designer that allows a User to revert changes made, which is located next to the Publish button:

You can also completely Discard all changes made to a layout in draft mode from the layout grid:

Clicking on Discard will revert the Layout to the previous Published version so that you can start over if needed.

[Bluebell]

Hi Natasha,
i have started to think about the new user interface,
will it be too difficult or problem to keep the user interface as 1.8 series?
1.8 series user interface has been very easy to use and simple while the new one is too complicated and no easy to use at all.
My opinion would be to make the new user interface look and behave like the 1.8 series but including the new features.

With best regards

[natasha]

Hi, just to give you an update, we recently had a development meeting to bring together all feedback from users and to further discuss the user experience of version 2.
It was felt that improvements could be made in an effort to make v2 a little easier to navigate. For example, we shall remove the current Region Editor window as this was felt to be a little cumbersome and will instead use the current Preview Window to manage Regions, resize, position etc which will be more familiar with the 1.8 CMS. We shall also include an ‘alternative view’ for the Timeline, which is very similar to 1.8 and the view we currently have adopted for the Playlist Timeline, as it was felt that this view was helpful when managing a large number of Widgets. In addition we will be working on making Layout Designer features much clearer, make it easier to add media from the library and newly created Layouts will be ready to be edited without the need to ‘checkout’, amongst other things.

As these improvements are released I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts!

[Bluebell]

Good morning!
thank you!
I do very much appreciate this.
It will certainly be great to have a clearer and easier user interface and you guys are on the right track

I am currently waiting for the version 2.2, will the changes be included into this version?
if yes, any ideas when will it be available?
Dan said we could have a solution for using content with rounds which i had some posts about.
The idea was to be able to display a media item let’s say once after each round, once after second round, once after third round etc.

And yes,
i will be very happy give you my feedback

With best regards

[natasha]

Good afternoon, just wanted to let you know that we have released 2.2.0-alpha 2 which includes some of the changes:

Xibo CMS - 2.2.0-alpha2 Released - Xibo Signage

We will be refining and including further changes in upcoming releases.

With regards to your proposal, this is still being considered and has been recorded in our private tracker with the following ID: OSX-722 so please do use this as a reference for future comms regarding this.

Please do give me any feedback you have on this release

Much appreciated, thank you!

[Bluebell]

Dear Natasha,
thank you!
Yes,
i will indeed test this the soon i get Alex to upgrade my test server.
However,
could you please clear this for me?
“Default Transition to apply to all Widgets”
What this means exactly?
does it work for Windows player also?

About this one,
“With regards to your proposal, this is still being considered and has been recorded in our private tracker with the following ID: OSX-722 so please do use this as a reference for future comms regarding this.”

We desperately need this feature and we need it as soon as possible because i currently have couple of advertising clients that i would very much like to be able to win. Without this feature, it is not going to happen.

Could you please forward it if we are willing to pay for the feature?
I will PM to Dan about this also.

With best regards

• daniel

[natasha]

Hi Daniel

That’s great to hear

The default settings for Transitions allows for default types and duration to be set in the CMS settings which will then be applied to all Widgets in all Layouts, so that you do not have to set these per Widget.

Default settings can also be applied when adding a new Layout or from the Edit Layout form in the Layout Designer.
Transitions are not supported on Windows Players.

I believe that Dan has responded to your feature request.

Best wishes
Natasha

[Bluebell]

Thank you
Yes,
Dan did answer.

With best regards

[Bluebell]

Hi Natasha,
here are some notes of the new layout editor version 2.3 alpha.
The functionality of the editor is okay but using it is not very easy nor doable with less work.

I still think the option “Checkout” needs to be removed because once you open the layout, you either edit it or you don’t, it will be one less click if removed.
If you edit it, it could than ask to publish while trying to close it. Publish means saving for most people, asking is good because it means there is still chance to redo the changes if not happy.

About this menu,

1. Library/search ==> This is good
2. Layout Designer Tools? ==> Perhaps Media Options?
   This button is however confusing, if you click any of the options under the menu, they are media item related, which means i can set transition, expiry or permissions for the items inside the layout not the layout itself. Right-click on media gives the same menu which is much easier and simple.
3. Layout designer widgets? ==> Could this perhaps be “Widgets”? or “Available Widgets”?

This,

Do we really need “Add”? can’t we just simply use the “Hand” which is drag & drop? because it is simple and clear enough. We should only keep the drag & drop IMO.

This,

I am not sure why do we need this?
Why should we need to zoom the timeline?

Editor is pretty good and works also pretty good if we could trim it a bit and remove all unnecessary stuff from it

About media items that exists in library,
If i have an image in library called “IMAGE-1.JPG” and i try to upload an image with the same name,
system keeps doing the upload and once it is done, it says you have a media with the same name and it does not re-upload it.
Not re-uploading is logical but uploading first and informing later is not logical.
I would like to suggest the following,
If the media exists,
system says it is existed and asks if i would like to replace it?
If i answer yes, it will replace the existed media item with the new one which in this case most likely is the newer version of the media item.
I know, we have “Replace” feature but it is not the same if we do not know, either the media item exists or not.

Media items

Do we have any chance of modifying selected items other than “Delete” and “Enable stats collection?”
Would be absolutely great to be able to set permissions for multiple items.

This same goes for the Layouts and Templates as well.
On layouts, it would be very helpful to be able to set permissions, assign to a campaign and export.
There are always times when we need to set same permissions for multiple layouts and templates, or assign multiple layouts to a campaign or export multiple layouts and templates.

And the Displays, where we could set permission for multiple displays and also send commands to multiple displays. example: if i want to reboot 10 screens at the same time.

Thank you!

[natasha]

Thank you for taking the time to test this release and provide such valuable feedback! I have responded under your points below:

I still think the option “Checkout” needs to be removed because once you open the layout, you either edit it or you don’t, it will be one less click if removed.
If you edit it, it could than ask to publish while trying to close it. Publish means saving for most people, asking is good because it means there is still chance to redo the changes if not happy.

Currently you can view the Layout Designer in a Published Status as a ‘read only’ mode so as to not inadvertently make changes to a Layout that could then disrupt any current schedules the Layout was in.

There are many ways of exiting the Layout Designer (as you don’t actually close this down) so I feel that it would be difficult to establish at what point you would prompt with a ‘do you need to Publish’ action?

1. Library/search ==> This is good
2. Layout Designer Tools? ==> Perhaps Media Options?
   This button is however confusing, if you click any of the options under the menu, they are media item related, which means i can set transition, expiry or permissions for the items inside the layout not the layout itself. Right-click on media gives the same menu which is much easier and simple.

That is correct, a right click on a media item gives you a menu of actions that can be applied which is, as you have found, the easiest way. However as this is not that obvious to new users of the CMS it is necessary to have this more easily accessible on the toolbar. I will feedback your naming suggestions.

3. Layout designer widgets? ==> Could this perhaps be “Widgets”? or “Available Widgets”?

I will feed this back.

Do we really need “Add”? can’t we just simply use the “Hand” which is drag & drop? because it is simple and clear enough. We should only keep the drag & drop IMO.

Add is used in preference by many users (including myself) and is also very useful if you have a Layout with many Regions in close proximity or overlapping, where clicking to Add can be far more accurate than drag and drop.

I am not sure why do we need this?
Why should we need to zoom the timeline?

The ability to zoom in and out of the timeline was requested by users who wanted to make it easier to see and manage larger Timelines. I have come across users that have in excess of 500 widgets on one Timeline so these buttons make navigation easier.

Editor is pretty good and works also pretty good if we could trim it a bit and remove all unnecessary stuff from it

Apart from the points you have mentioned above, are there additional elements of the editor you think are not needed / improved?

About media items that exists in library ,
If i have an image in library called “IMAGE-1.JPG” and i try to upload an image with the same name,
system keeps doing the upload and once it is done, it says you have a media with the same name and it does not re-upload it.
Not re-uploading is logical but uploading first and informing later is not logical.
I would like to suggest the following,
If the media exists,
system says it is existed and asks if i would like to replace it?
If i answer yes, it will replace the existed media item with the new one which in this case most likely is the newer version of the media item.
I know, we have “Replace” feature but it is not the same if we do not know, either the media item exists or not.

I will feed this point back to the team for further discussion

Media items
Do we have any chance of modifying selected items other than “Delete” and “Enable stats collection?”
Would be absolutely great to be able to set permissions for multiple items.
This same goes for the Layouts and Templates as well.
On layouts, it would be very helpful to be able to set permissions, assign to a campaign and export.
There are always times when we need to set same permissions for multiple layouts and templates, or assign multiple layouts to a campaign or export multiple layouts and templates.
And the Displays, where we could set permission for multiple displays and also send commands to multiple displays. example: if i want to reboot 10 screens at the same time.

We are aware of the current limitations and are looking at having the ability to have multi-select for permissions.

Again thank you for this, and I look forward to further feedback!

[Bluebell]

Thank you!

@natasha

There are many ways of exiting the Layout Designer (as you don’t actually close this down) so I feel that it would be difficult to establish at what point you would prompt with a ‘do you need to Publish’ action?

Well,
When i open a layout at “Design” mode, it asks to checkout or view.
If checkout is selected and layout editor closed with out any changes, the layout is left as “Draft”.
If i do some changes and close it without publishing, it still remains as “Draft”.
The question here is,
what if user thinks it is all good and expects the changes to be visible on display?
Will the changes be visible on display with out the magic click “Publish”?

@natasha

The ability to zoom in and out of the timeline was requested by users who wanted to make it easier to see and manage larger Timelines. I have come across users that have in excess of 500 widgets on one Timeline so these buttons make navigation easier.

Still not sure if this is really necessary.
If i zoom it out to the end, i can no longer see the media items as shown in the following image

The timeline becomes a single color with no media items visible in it. If i have 500 widgets, not sure how scrolling is going to help, if cannot see what to select and edit.
Scroll to selected widget doesn’t really make any difference to me either. If i select a widget, i need to first go to the widget in order to be able to scroll to it anyway. The best option is to see the widgets as list which already is there. I therefore, still believe zooming is confusing and unnecessary.

@natasha

Apart from the points you have mentioned above, are there additional elements of the editor you think are not needed / improved?

So far, it is good but if i discover something new, i will let you know

Many thanks!

[natasha]

So when you checkout a Published Layout, you are creating a Draft of that Layout that you can edit, (so that it won’t affect any Published Layouts that could already be in schedules). To confirm those edits, (and overwrite the existing Published Layout) you would Publish, at which point your changes would then be sent to the Player.

There is also a default setting that allows for the auto publishing of Draft Layouts:

We are going to look at the help text at Publish/Checkout to work on making the process clearer to users.

I have taken your feedback regarding the Timeline zoom buttons to the dev team who are working on some enhancements for this which we aim to be included in the beta!

Thank you once again!

[Bluebell]

Thanks Natasha
Very much appreciated.

We are currently in desperate need of this version to be ready and have the possibility of displaying content every first round, every second round, every third round etc. (Dan has promised to make this happen at the next release).

Have a great weekend