Alternative admin layouts

[ijyoung]

We are spoiling a damn good programme for the want of a decent admin layout. Anyone out there have an alternative admin area or are there any plans to build one.

It seems to me that we have loads of good front ends but the selling point for clients is a user friendly and professional looking back office.

I have just spent a whole day working my way through the amended attributes page trying to make it look half decent and I have to say I haven't seen such a bloody mess in all my life. There are tables nested within tables nested within tables, javascript on the page and tons of php that I would have expected to be off page too.

Horror of horrors, it has a doctype of html 4.01 but has xhtml tags, lots of missing end tags.

Frankly it looks bloody amateurish - no one had a look at Joomla/Mambo for ideas?

In the front end it has been relatively easy to get rid of unnecessary tables and validate but I am unhappy about using the back end for commercial customers.

So now that I have rant over, can some kind person point me in direction of a template that looks half way professional or do I have to spend the next week or so rebuilding the entire admin area?


Ian

[barco57]

get to working.....the admin is supposed to be redone in version 1.6

[Merlinpa1969]

Ian,
what version of ZC are you using,

1.3.6 only has 1 core table on the catalog side ( index.php top center bottom left and right,


the only other place there is a table in the catalog is for TABULAR data.

as far as the admin,

it is scheduled for a rebuild in the future, there are other things that need to be done first, and if you want to hollar at someone about the admin his name is Harald

most of the admin is legacy and the devs know its a mess...

[ijyoung]

Using 1.3.6, and as far as I can see - every page in admin is based on table design.

In attributes-controller, the borders are even specified. yuch.

I wouldn't mind if the tables were used for tabular data but that is not the case and even then, it is relatively easy to get round that in css.

I appreciate how big the task is of tidying up the admin area and changing to valid css/html/xhtml, mushc of what I do for clients is just that - but this is huge, unravelling all the nested tables will be like digging in a bowl of spagetti for the end.

Maybe attributes-controller was not the best one to start with and the main style-sheet is a nightmare.

In the said a-c page, I have relocated all the php ahead of the header off page - still seems to work and of course makes it easier to style the rest of the html

Trying to do the same for the javascript that works the amended dropdowns but JavaScript is not my strong point.

Off to design board.

Ian
PS Tell me we don't have to wait until 1.6 to get a good back office