[MTOS-dev] Looking for Feedback: Template Listing UI

[Mark Carey]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 5:53 PM, Chad Everett <2008 at everitz.com> wrote:
>  +1 to listing the publishing path for templates on the screen,
>
>  -1 for having them all mixed together like that in one list.

I agree with Chad on both counts above.

I definitely don't want them to be in a merged (alpha-sorted) list.
Sometimes I have dozens of index templates, and don't want scan the
list for the few archive templates interspersed.  Perhaps they could
be in two separate lists on the same page, but if you are going to do
that then maybe you  might as well go back to the "tabs" approach in
MT 3.x in which each "tab" is a hidden div.

My biggest beef with MT4 template management is indeed the difficulty
in navigation from editing a single template to a template listing of
a different type.  For example, suppose I am editing the "main index"
and I want to go directly to the "template module" listing.  I can't
do in a single click.  I have to choose "List index templates" or go
via the menu Design > Templates, then wait for that page to load, and
only *then* is there a link to list the template modules.  This
frustrates me to no end on daily basis.  You should be able to jump to
any of those template listings from any template listing or edit
template screen, in a single click.

Other feature requests:

- A "hidden" attribute for templates, and a display option to go with it.
- Make templates taggable, so you could filter the listing (view
templates tagged with 'feeds', for example)
- A "recently modified" filter that lists templates (of all types),
sorted in reverse chrono order by 'modified_on' date.

Bug fix requests:

- fix the "publish" list action such that it publishes index templates
that have "publish with indexes" unchecked, which is the primary use
case for the feature. (Case 67025)
- fix the bug that intermittently truncates very long templates during
a CMS save without generating an error message of any kind.  This bug
persists in 4.1 and IMO, data loss bugs should be top priority. That
said, I know this one has been a hard one to nail down.

Regards,

Mark