Improved control panel design

[TitanKing]

I propose we work on the design of PHPDevShells control panel. The workings of it will be the same, but the idea to impliment notifications and allers on CP items means we need a rework. On large page calls the multiple icon calls can also be very slow. The idea is to only change the design side of it with the exception of a quick launch search area.

Please see design proposal revision 1 attached.

[TitanKing (titan-phpdevshell)]

I should mention this will also be attached to your jquery theme by default.

[Don Schoeman (don.sch)]

Just a few suggestions. Some of the menu's in PHPDS is too deep and this is one of the reasons for the many control panel icons in some menu's. Technically it is feasible to move the Policy Admin menu item to a root menu item. This makes a big difference as there are then almost no menu's going more than two levels deep and the large amount of control panel buttons problem is effectively fixed. I have done this in my latest project and it works great.

I also propose that a Search input should not be placed on the control panel. Quick Searches should potentially be available on all screens and not just control panel screens. This will also clash with existing searches on the site as the user will then have two search inputs which would be confusing. In our latest software for example we have customised the menu to display a search input inside the menu itself on the right side. If there is a second search option on the control panel as well it is going to be quite confusing for the user.

I'm assuming you are also going to take away the actual icons itself. This might not be such a bad idea as it is sometimes a pain to try and find icons for custom menu's. As long as one can make it look equally good it would be fine.

[TitanKing (titan-phpdevshell)]

Maybe when one hovers over the menu an icon can still slide up, I don't know, will see how it looks. The idea is to make the control panel really fast. This is a very raw proposal and I dont have the time to tackle this right now, but I want to start consuming ideas.

[Greg (gregfr)]

After some reflexion, I think we eventually need two control panels:

- a 'plain' version, like a folder / directory content
- a 'smart' version, for administrator

it may or may not be pertinent to have two controllers