Having spent a few hoursover the weekend, I'm not that much further forward.
whilst i have managed to get the DW interface working ok, swaping between the interface and back to AC, is somewhat buggy. I've lost count of the number of times AC crashed, DW crashed and I had to reinstall AC.
I completely lost the ability to change colours, i had a random set of colours applied to my design which i could not change, nothing short of re-install cured that one.
More worrying is the "variables"
This list of variables is too long and could do with better explanation. In fact I'd like to see them arranged in a similar manner to previous versions.ie Design menu, text. At least they could be grouped.
My issue with the variables consist of the following, there's more... but lets keep it simple for now.
ParentSectionList, why are there 3 variables for one item?
item, top, bottom
item is described at inserts entries into PSL
top select whether you want PSL at top of product page
bottom select whether you want PSL at bottom of product page
wouldn't it be better to have one variable called "breadcrumb trail" which you can insert where ever you want it. Surely by allowing the ability to place variables where we want them means the top and bottom are redundant? My first stab at adding PSL saw me chosing item -which was wrong - as i read the other 2 descriptions as choices as to whether I wanted them ie select whether you want it at top or bottom.
Navigation Variables or are they layouts?
I've still not found the variables for individual text navigation links (by this I mean the old NAVBHOME, NAVBCATALOG links) All I have found is the variable "NavigationBar" I still want to be able to add my own naviagation bar that does not change from page to page, I also want to find the text links and not button bar. I'd also like to be able to save my own bar as a custom (i suspect this facility is there i just haven;t looked for it yet, as I can't create the thing I want to save)
Similarly I've not found all the navigation layouts yet, or maybe I have but they aren't named very well, I found JavaScript Array - "inserts a java script array containing section data into the design and JavaScriptSub Section Array - what are they? why would I want to use them? has an out ofthe box builder got an hope of knowing what they are?
Similarly TopLevelSectionLink "inserts entries into a top level section list" and TopLevelSectionList "inserts a list of top level sections into the design" - what do they mean? Doesn't the list contain links? if so what is the links variable for?
Where are the other menus, or are they layouts and not variables, if they are layuts why do we have TopLevelSectionList as a variable.
Again I feel layouts and variables could be laid out better as mentionedabove (old Design Text) and possibly a usibility expert could put better descriptions to the variables (its all abit geeky and legacy at present)
The ability to sort on description as well as variable would be helpful.
Going back to design, again it would be nice to see the designs compartmentalised as they were before. It is nice to see there a 4 new designs, although I had to read the documentation to find them (I even needed to read the documentatin before I found the one that I had designed!). But why do we still have the old legacy V3 and v4 designs clogging up the lists. I always thought they were there for backward compatibility, but given that you can only upgrade from 6 upwards, it might be an idea to ditch these now as they are seriuosly outdated now.
Most people are using cleanlayouts, smart, bestseller, some of the more outlandish old designs could go without any serious loss.
Thats about it for feedback right now, i don't have anything negative to say about the features etc I am very happy with the product overall. It is definately the right way to go. I am more concerned about the usability. There are a few more experienced developers having difficulies, therefore I wonder how many potetial out of the box builders will be aleinated by the complexity. I suspect current developers use experience and intuition, one of both of these is failing.
The next step has to be to get usability experts on the user interface and make that more end user friendly, we also need more documentation and basic tutorials (video tutorials would be excellent).
Whilst we have the beta guide, its a bit dry - although what documentation isn't dry? Users nowadays expect better guides coupled with software that works with abit of intuition.
I probably won't spend much time on beta this week, I'll wait for the next beta release so hopefully I get less crashes and maybe some ofthe things I do using intuition won't bring the house down.
Good Luck Guys
whilst i have managed to get the DW interface working ok, swaping between the interface and back to AC, is somewhat buggy. I've lost count of the number of times AC crashed, DW crashed and I had to reinstall AC.
I completely lost the ability to change colours, i had a random set of colours applied to my design which i could not change, nothing short of re-install cured that one.
More worrying is the "variables"
This list of variables is too long and could do with better explanation. In fact I'd like to see them arranged in a similar manner to previous versions.ie Design menu, text. At least they could be grouped.
My issue with the variables consist of the following, there's more... but lets keep it simple for now.
ParentSectionList, why are there 3 variables for one item?
item, top, bottom
item is described at inserts entries into PSL
top select whether you want PSL at top of product page
bottom select whether you want PSL at bottom of product page
wouldn't it be better to have one variable called "breadcrumb trail" which you can insert where ever you want it. Surely by allowing the ability to place variables where we want them means the top and bottom are redundant? My first stab at adding PSL saw me chosing item -which was wrong - as i read the other 2 descriptions as choices as to whether I wanted them ie select whether you want it at top or bottom.
Navigation Variables or are they layouts?
I've still not found the variables for individual text navigation links (by this I mean the old NAVBHOME, NAVBCATALOG links) All I have found is the variable "NavigationBar" I still want to be able to add my own naviagation bar that does not change from page to page, I also want to find the text links and not button bar. I'd also like to be able to save my own bar as a custom (i suspect this facility is there i just haven;t looked for it yet, as I can't create the thing I want to save)
Similarly I've not found all the navigation layouts yet, or maybe I have but they aren't named very well, I found JavaScript Array - "inserts a java script array containing section data into the design and JavaScriptSub Section Array - what are they? why would I want to use them? has an out ofthe box builder got an hope of knowing what they are?
Similarly TopLevelSectionLink "inserts entries into a top level section list" and TopLevelSectionList "inserts a list of top level sections into the design" - what do they mean? Doesn't the list contain links? if so what is the links variable for?
Where are the other menus, or are they layouts and not variables, if they are layuts why do we have TopLevelSectionList as a variable.
Again I feel layouts and variables could be laid out better as mentionedabove (old Design Text) and possibly a usibility expert could put better descriptions to the variables (its all abit geeky and legacy at present)
The ability to sort on description as well as variable would be helpful.
Going back to design, again it would be nice to see the designs compartmentalised as they were before. It is nice to see there a 4 new designs, although I had to read the documentation to find them (I even needed to read the documentatin before I found the one that I had designed!). But why do we still have the old legacy V3 and v4 designs clogging up the lists. I always thought they were there for backward compatibility, but given that you can only upgrade from 6 upwards, it might be an idea to ditch these now as they are seriuosly outdated now.
Most people are using cleanlayouts, smart, bestseller, some of the more outlandish old designs could go without any serious loss.
Thats about it for feedback right now, i don't have anything negative to say about the features etc I am very happy with the product overall. It is definately the right way to go. I am more concerned about the usability. There are a few more experienced developers having difficulies, therefore I wonder how many potetial out of the box builders will be aleinated by the complexity. I suspect current developers use experience and intuition, one of both of these is failing.
The next step has to be to get usability experts on the user interface and make that more end user friendly, we also need more documentation and basic tutorials (video tutorials would be excellent).
Whilst we have the beta guide, its a bit dry - although what documentation isn't dry? Users nowadays expect better guides coupled with software that works with abit of intuition.
I probably won't spend much time on beta this week, I'll wait for the next beta release so hopefully I get less crashes and maybe some ofthe things I do using intuition won't bring the house down.
Good Luck Guys
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