Orchard and the Dashboard UI, "friendlyfy"? [closed] - user-interface

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I just started to investigate Orchard for the 5:th time, and I thought that I might want to give it a fair chance.. however.. there is one think that me and my collegues simply cant get our heads around.. why is the UI so "techy"?.. For instance Umbraco has a very clean and simple Admin UI thats mostly understandable by anyone (even "none tech" persons)..
So my question is basically, is there something that we are missing?.. is there any user advantage to the Orchard Dashboard UI over the Umbraco UI for instance, or is there any module thats a "must have" to make the UI a bit more familiar?

Every time i have a new orchard instance, i always install the module Theme Editor
https://gallery.orchardproject.net/List/Modules/Orchard.Module.M33.SystemEditor
This module allows you to edit Views, JS, CSS inside of the cms itself. This probably complicates the UI even more however.
To answer your question, there is nothing to my knowledge to make the UI easier to adapt to. However if you spend the time to get to learn it then you realize there are a lot of very powerful things you can do with it and it is a fantastic example of MVC that is at your fingertips to modify to your hearts content.

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Starting a new project with Laravel [closed]

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Im beginning a new project with Laravel 4 / 5 (done this many times).
I dont want to re-write the wheel setting up admin interfaces and user authentication.
Is it wise to use something like OctoberCMS and pull it part to my own ends?
Why I would do this:
I want extensive CMS functionality
I want a nice user interface
I dont want to code all that!
I have dabbled with the october CMS, and it's really great (as a cms) for someone like a front end dev (rather than say, a generic client who wants to just update content).
A lot of work has been put into the CMS, and to use it effectively you will be extending the October CMS which means doing things the "October way" assuming you want to tie most of your added functionality into some sort of user interface.
If you are ok with learning the ins and outs of October - then it seems like in the long run it will be of benefit.
If you don't go with October - there aren't many alternatives ([packages] which I have come across) which provide a simple foundation and have been updated recently - having said that the core of wardrobe might be something to look into: https://github.com/wardrobecms/core
As for roles/auth - take a look at Entrust (https://github.com/Zizaco/entrust) and Confide - I have used them together in the past and found them functional and easy to use.
(I have no affiliation with any of the packages mentioned above)

Good vs bad practice in coding [closed]

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I've been working in this company for about 8 months now and i'd like some advice how to tell my collegues that what they write is bad practice. Let me give a little introduction first.
The company im working at allows its customers to setup questionairres/surveys. The current code is about 5 years old (or older) and they've made a new platform which supports mobile devices. This platform is relatively new, but i've noticed something which i call 'bad practice':
They simply do not seperate code and html. Everything is dynamically build up using 1 single c# generaing class, which blurts out html, script tags, inline css "style='position: relative;'" and so on.
My main question is:
How do i convince my colleagues and especially my IT manager to keep these seperated.
It's bugging me a lot, but maybe i should just let it go. We simply do not have the resources for it and im probably not the person to make any calls about this. I just dont get how come the programmers who made this new 'platform' didnt think about this.
We also have lots of coding problems:
Different versions of jquery and mootools are being used throughout our applications
There's loads of duplicate code
CSS files being included after each other have stuff like '!important' in them, and some are being overwritten with each include. For example: 'Master.css', 'another_file.css' both declare the exact same css rules.
Please help me out to convince my IT department theyre doing things too unorganized, write unmaintable code and simply have no standards anywhere without sounding like a whiner. Don't get me wrong, i love my job, but it's really working on my nerves. If things don't work they do a little dirty hack on a hack on a hack and things will get more messy by the day.

Which ways should I go Front-End firs or Back-end first in Project development? [closed]

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I want build an application by using the framework.
the application contains two parts: the Back-End and the Front-End.
Everybody who have experiences can suggest me which ways should I do?:
Develop the Front-End first Or Develop the Back-End first
Or give more tips on the start up project?
thanks
I usually start with the backend to get the major functionality implemented, but even so, it's pretty much inevitable that the frontend and backend will have to be developed at the same time at some point in the project.
People can say what they want about separating presentation and functionality, and that's a good principle, but the reality is that the presentation influences the functionality and vice versa.
You might get the backend mostly written, and then you make the frontend, but you will probably decide to change some things and end up working on both together.

Which GUI tookit for quick working prototypes/mockups [closed]

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I'm primarily a server-side developer - not even web server stuff. But I'm finding more and more that I need to mockup user interfaces. This is in part to more senior roles doing overall product design, but there is some personal interest as well.
I'm wondering what would be a good UI toolkit to learn. I won't be making production user interfaces, and doing them as web apps would just be fine. I've been leaning towards learning jQuery as it has a graphing library I like to use (flot). Someone else at work is suggesting EXT-GWT.
Is there anything else out there? For straight up mockups I use Balsamiq, but sometimes I want to go a little past plain mockups and add some functionality.
Thanks.
If you're just after GUI libraries/frameworks, have a look at GWT and Vaadin.
You might want to also look at something like WaveMaker, which is a rapid application development platform. As well as allowing you to mock up simple GUI's it should make it easy to add in functionality as well.
I haven't used anything a lot except jQuery.
It has been great especially when you start using the UI and theming which makes quick work of standard things. It'd be a problem if you wanted anything outside the box because then you'd have to find a plugin or write your own. (both of which are fairly easy IMHO.)
If you use ExtJS, they also have a designer: http://www.sencha.com/products/designer
Even if you just go with ExtJS, Senchas has a lot of widgets that make prototyping much easier. ExtJS 4 will be shipping in a month or so. I'd start with it.
http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/ext-4.0-beta3/examples/
You can check out ForeUI. It makes working prototype and run as DHTML in browser. It's quite easy to learn and use.

What are the best interface features of a CMS you have used? [closed]

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There are a million and one CMS' that do a good job but the interface and usability of it let the entire system down (like a lot of websites out there).
Whenever I need to develop a bespoke system for content management I always try and draw on my past experiences and those of my clients to work out what works well and what doesn't. So each time I do one there is a similarity to the last but with some extra tweaking to make it that much better.
So the question is what CMS interface / features have you found a pleasure to work with and why?
Note: This could be editing pages, products, sitemaps, just about anything you needed to manage through a CMS
I personally think inline-editing is a massive speed boost for clients and developers.
Drupal 6's draggable menu reordering is a great feature. It is faster and more intuitive than the weight system from Drupal 5 and the up/down arrows I have seen elsewhere.
I agree with jchrista, drag-and-drop is very nice. This is the feature that initially drew me to Sitefinity. There is an online demo of this here.
I hate InterWoven (just because I find it slow and non intuitive--subjective..), but it has a nice WorkFlow setting that enables you to control the versions you have on the server between what you have been working on and what should be deployed.
Also a good (go back to before the screw up) productivity tools
MOSS has lots of interesting features that are supposed to do the same thing also, which I will look forward to test as we move towards that platform.

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