prepared by Graham Spice for nuthin' werked
Sept. 2005
Nashville, TN
We wanted to see the changes to the admin UI of Joomla! for ourselves so we jumped into a new installation. In the process, we took some screenshots of the changes we noticed from $ambo 4.5.2.3 to Joomla! 1.0. The shots have been updated where appropriate for the 1.0.1 release. Enjoy.
Admin Home
Obvious changes are the new Joomla! Administrator
title graphic, reorganized icon boxes (here we are rolling over the "Add new Content" icon box as an example) and the red lipstick font color for the links and tab highlights. We like the way the "Help" icon was moved to the action icon area in the top-right and a few frequently used icons (FUI?) were moved into the new icon boxes like "Add New Content" and the "Language Manager". Frequent users of $ambo might notice that the "All Content Items" icon has been renamed to the "Content Items Manager".
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Admin All Content Items
New action icon boxes in top-right corner are no longer grayed-out. Rolling over the "New" action icon for an example.
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Admin Edit Content Item
The main changes here are the tabs which are displayed individually below. You can also see how Joomla! 1.0 greys out the main menu items as opposed to hiding them with $ambo 4.5.2.x. We are rolling over the "Apply" action icon here.
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Admin Edit Content Images Tab
The Gallery Images are all available images and the Content Images are ones to be used in the content.
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Admin Edit Content Parameters Tab
The aren't any functional changes that we are aware of here but you might notice the much improved underlining CSS/overLib technique for field info. You can see how we've rolled over the first field name, "Page Class Suffix" and the info box has popped up over it. This is common throughout the new interface as rhuk and the UI team appear to move away from the blue spherical "I". Good work - much cleaner.
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Admin Edit Menu Module
The "Activate Parent" option is new here. We are rolling over the "Apply" action icon.
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Admin Media Manager
Some time was spent to reorganize the Media Manager as well as create some more information for media. This screenshot is showing what happens when you roll over both an image and a folder. These rollovers bring up the overLib box with more info about the file (image, folder , etc). The folder/file info overLib was added in 1.0.1 along with the "Cancel" action icon.
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Admin Global Configuration - Locale Tab
Joomla! 1.0.1 includes a change to the Time Offsets parameter to include a hardcoded list with country/city names that is selected in the screenshot below.
Admin User Manager
Minor change to the "Logout" button which is rolled over here.
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Admin User Manager - Add User
Big change here with the per user WYSIWYG editor choice. We are rolling over the "Apply" action icon.
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Admin New Menu Item
1.0.1 brings the new overLib styling getting away from the blue spherical "I". Unfortunately, this makes the page quite a bit taller taking up more vertical screen real estate than before. The release of 1.0.0 brought with it the welcomed addition of a new menu type - "Submit Content". We are rolling over the "Next" action icon here.
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Admin New Menu Item Submit - Content
Options for this new type of menu item. More blue spherical "I"s here. We are rolling over the "Save" action icon.
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Admin Contacts Edit Category
Minor change here to add Menu Item link from the Contacts Category Edit page. We are rolling over the "Apply" action icon.
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These screenshots and the changelog herald the new direction for the project.. The UI has been updated with a bold black and red look for Joomla! 1.0. The changelog shows a clear development direction towards a stronger application framework with many items relating directly to library upgrades, extended functions and more. As custom developers and daily users of Joomla!, nuthin' werked is in firm agreement with this direction. Twenty cheers to the Joomla! core development team for leaving the clutches of the $iro Foundation, setting up shop for themselves, choosing a new name, setting up a new forge for Joomla! projects and releasing a version so quickly! Wow.
Now that many of the initial bugs have been addressed with 1.0.1 we think that Joomla! is ready for production sites. Current $ambo users should continue to keep a close eye on various addon compatibility issues that have been posted on the official forum. We recommend following the forums regarding your favorite addons as well as monitoring the new Joomla! Bug Tracker.
nuthin' werked will continue to build effective websites for our clients and are pleased with the direction and changes made to Joomla! 1.0. Feel free to contact nuthin' werked to discuss adding yourself or your company to our list of clients.
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