NextGEN Gallery UI improvement suggestions.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Alex (too) and what I do for living is HCI, UI design and other vile things the programmers hate. (joke! ;)) I was using NextGEN lately, and probably as a professional deviation, started writing down some of the NextGEN’s User interface rough edges. So, in my effort to be useful and/or helpful, I am sending them to you!

Ah, one more thing! The entries are written pretty dry, you will see. 😉 I wrote them, in a matter-of-fact manner. I tried to be straight and concise and follow WordPress UI design ‘folklore’ as close as possible in the suggestions. I didn’t mean to be rude or anything!

This is just a starter, If you think this is helping you any, there are many more suggestions with other pages and panels. I just didn’t want to bother you unnecessarily the first time around. 🙂

Sincerely,
Another Alex

GALLERIES PAGE
— ‘Manage gallery’: the column ‘Title’ should be renamed to ‘Gallery’ (‘title’ is ambiguous, as in ‘title of what?’)
— ‘Manage gallery’: the column ‘Quantity’ should be renamed to ‘Images’ (‘quantity’ is ambiguous)
— ‘Manage gallery’: ‘Add new gallery’ button should be positioned to right from the main title.
— ‘Manage gallery’: the column ‘Action’ is redundant. ‘Delete’ action should be put to the action drop-down box.
— ‘Manage gallery’: the dropdown with actions and ‘Apply’ button should be placed under the gallery table, too.
— ‘Manage gallery’: page should have this simple gallery creation form under the table (see: ‘Users’ page in the ‘Super Admin’ menu for reference’). Therefore clicking the ‘Add new gallery’ button should move the screen to that form’s anchor.
— Manage gallery: ‘Manage gallery’ menu entry should be renamed to ‘Galleries’ to conform to WP common style of menu naming (Users, Posts, Pages, …)
— ‘Manage gallery’ page title is ‘Gallery overview’, should be only ‘Galleries’.

ALBUM PAGE
— Menu Name: ‘Album’ menu entry should be renamed to ‘Albums’ to conform to WP common style of menu naming.
— Manage albums: it would be cool for users that one preset album is already there on the first run. Similar to the initial post in any wordpress blog. To less advanced users this is an immense help to figure out what to do.
— Manage albums: headers should have the same look as widget panels have, I think. (for example: the plus-minus thing is nice but unnatural in WP GUI. It appears as if the result will be adding a new gallery or album)
— Manage albums: The first box (leftmost) should have fixed width.
— Manage albums: Similar to the widgets, the panel we are putting albums INTO should be to the right. The sources (albums and galleries) should be to the left.
— Manage albums: ‘Update’ button should definitely be located lower left, to follow the rest of WordPress GUI.

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