On the 8th and 9th July seven people gathered at the Chancellors Conference Centre, in Manchester, for a 2 day code sprint looking at Joomla UX. Talking about things online is great but you can't beat real face to face time. (Chancellors was chosen as it was the most accessible location and being part of Manchester University they use Joomla)

We split each day into analysis and coding sessions that ran from 9am through until three or four in the morning and achieved a huge amount. Of course some of the work we discussed has not even been started yet and some of the items we discussed will just have to wait until Joomla 4.

Our aims were to improve the usability, accessibility, consistency and perhaps more importantly to reduce some perceived complexity. You can see the work achieved to date in the short video below but to summarise:

Language

• Do not display language settings when the site is monolingual

Update

• Add more prominent update warning

Manager Screens

• Remove left column to make full width
• Add new search tools
• Only display buttons that are active
• Move task dropdown and make accessible
• ** Add no content message **
• Semantic and visual display changes for consistency

Front end tools

• Add link to module edit
• Add link to menu item edit

Work that was discussed but has not been started yet included

• Reduce the number of tabs in the edit screen and simplify the display
• Make tabs in module, plugin and menu items consistent
• Move required/essential fields to the first tab

The Achievements To Date

An image says a thousand words but a video says even more: