Believe it or not, one of the most common complaints were heard with all Joomla was that the article writing(editing) screen was overloaded. There were too many options on the page, so most new users was confusion, and the active actual editor area was small, too small.
In Joomla 3, the article screen is given almost the full width of the page.
Let’s start from top, in Joomla 1.7 and later Joomla 2.5 the additional options were arranged all over the screen. Now in Joomla 3 almost all of the extra options are now organized into tabs across the top the screen, you will find here Publishing, Article and Metadata Options, and also Article Permissions which were previously under editor area.
Configure Edit Screen
A new feature (tab) is Configure Edit Screen, which allows you to configure the appearance of the article edit screen from the back-end or front-end:
- Show Publishing Options – you can set to display or hide the publishing options slider in the article edit view. These options allow changes in dates and author identities.
- Show Article Options – display or hide article options slider in the backend article edit view. These options allow overriding of the global options.
- Administrator Images and Links – Display or hide fields to insert standardized images and links in the administrator
- Frontend Images and Links – display or hide fields to insert standardized images and links when front end editing
At the bottom there are only few ‘old’ buttons like: Article, which help to add a link to any article, Image, Page Break, Read More and Toggle editor – to toggle between a rich text editor and plain text editing with the click of a button. Nothing has changed in this area.
The right-hand column has been purified from the drop-down list functionality, and only the most important options are placed in the right-hand column. You might know the responsive administrator template it’s included in Joomla 3.0. You can control your Joomla site (not only front-end, but also the back-end) with mobile devices with ease. A responsive site will resize to the screen it is presented on any browsers or devices. This helps users manage the administrator easily on the mobile. |
Summary
Overall, the changes in Joomla 3.0 alpha 2 should be considered positive, but I think that the options for images also should be hidden under the tab, like others or in K2 component. What I hope happens in future.