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The latest release of Cyclone3 XULadmin brings new usability improvements. We have been striving for more user convenience, ease of use and a steady workflow. Also, we have formalized the Usability Standards - basic guidelines for further development and improvement.

Apllication Core and the UI

Double-click

The doubleclick action (for all listings) should invoke either an opening (editing) action or a rename action (such as double-clicking an icon description in most explorers). In the past, this was not always clear so now, XULadmin behaves consistently:

• double-click on text - if the text supports it, invokes a rename action
• double-click on an icon / thumbnail - invokes edit/open action - in tree listings as well as thumbnail listings

Clipboard use

A smart clipboard feature is being implemented to intelligently insert values in tree listings. Currently, values in a sitemap definition page listing can be copied and pasted.

SOAP Core changes

SOAP calls tracking has been improved. Particularly, SOAP Faults can be tracked back into their source bindings (which made the actuall call) and can be handled there.

Intranet applications

The two popular intranet applications - Organizations (a710) and Events (a730) now can be categorized.

Video and Multimedia

When a video is uploaded, it is re-generated in formats, which are specified as the default formats. If the back-end supports additional video formats, the user can manually request the video to be generated in any of these formats. (in the Video Part File list) This is also useful if for some reason one of the default formats is not generated properly.

Article relations

Every article editing window now offers 3 additional tabs:

• Related articles: All articles that are linked to this particular article.
  Please note this: Relations without a type are invalid since the september release. Type 'link' is to be used.
• Images gallery: An image gallery related to the particular image
• Attachments: File attachments for the article
  

Editing your documents

Editing a text is usually the key feature for a XULadmin user.  Improvements in this build include:

Inserting a link

URLs can be inserted in these ways (apart from editing the HTML directly):

• a global URL - just type the address
• to another article in the CMS (internal)
  
• file (internal)
  
• sitemap page (internal)
  

Inserting a picture

Images can be inserted from a gallery, as always. Direct upload has been added as a new feature.

Editing a multimedia object (picture  / video / video_part)

The context menu now gives you an option to edit inserted images, videos and video parts directly from your document. 

External editors

You can use external editors to paste the text to XULadmin's own editor later. However, please note that many Rich-text editors (MS Word, OpenOffice Writer, etc.) will produce an HTML code that will break your page! The internal HTML editor has been patched to recognize this code and warn the user. If you really know what you're doing an why, you are encourage to use the cleanup tool after pasting such code to the editor.

Usability standards

Cyclone3 Framework and CMS consists of many elements. As the project grows it is more than important to define a clear set of rules and recommendations for the developers. This should ensure that the applications are written in such a way that the  user to be able to use them intuitively. They should also speed up the workflow rather than hinder it. This leads to the basic principle of Cyclone3:

The intention of the author is superior to the internal logic of the content management system.

To read or contribute to the usability standards, please follow the Usability Standards page in the wiki.