I just wanted to add my 2cents worth as an opinion in favor of modals replacing popups for many of the admin links.
I am in no way claiming that a poorly implemented modal window is superior to a new window... and there are certainly cases where a new window is preferable to the "perfect" modal. Taking that into consideration, assume for the remainder of my reply that the modal popup is well implemented and addresses all raised usability concerns. In my experience, modals can be very beneficial to users that are not technically inclined. From a UX perspective, this is important to consider. As long as the modal window is implemented using unobtrusive javascript, "power users" can be expected to know (or at least be taught/shown) that they can click with the middle mouse button to open a new tab or right click to select between new tab and new window instead of the default modal. During my encounters with the fabled "technically challenged" user, I have observed that they tend to get confused (or at the very least have trouble navigating) when several windows are opened. They are not proficient with alt-tab or any other window management techniques that you and I are comfortable with. For this class of user, it makes sense to select the most appropriate default action for their click whenever possible. I would counter the argument about native windows being superior with the following: the browser isn't aware of how tightly related the linked content is to the current page. As such, it can't decide that the link should be opened as a modal inside of the current browsing context instead of a new window. This means that it must fall back to the more generic of choices to cover all cases. However, the content author does know the relation between the current page and the linked page. Because of this knowledge, it makes sense that the author can make a better default selection than the browser when choosing a context in which to open a particular link. For the sake of demonstration, I've found jQuery mobile to be an excellent choice when dealing with non-technical users. Just to be clear, I am not advocating for JQM to be used in the admin with this reply. With that being said, here is a link to examples of modal dialogs that I am fond of: http://demos.jquerymobile.com/1.4.5/pages-dialog/ On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 5:41:38 AM UTC-5, Russell Keith-Magee wrote: > > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Loïc Bistuer <loic.b...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> > >> > On Feb 25, 2015, at 09:07, Russell Keith-Magee <rus...@keith-magee.com >> <javascript:>> wrote: >> > >> > I have an operating system with a graphical user interface. The >> developers of that operating system spent an immense amount of time >> developing it, polishing it, making it behave in predictable ways, getting >> keyboard accessibility sorted out, and so on. The idea of a CSS+HTML+JS >> implementation of UI features that badly implement half of the behavior >> provided natively by the OS - and the idea that this implementation is >> somehow *preferable* to native UI elements - absolutely *boggles* my mind. >> >> While I agree on desktop OS, I find responsive HTML modals much more >> usable on mobile. >> >> > Weird - I've found the exact opposite, especially if you're talking about > a site that doesn't have a mobile-optimised website. I've given up counting > the number of websites that have popups that are larger than the screen > size of the mobile device... and then helpfully keep the modal window > centred on the screen so that the dismiss button is off the screen. > > That said, HTML modals vs popups is hardly the biggest issue we have when >> it comes to usability on mobile platforms, which isn't surprising >> considering the admin look & feel was invented way before mobile was a >> thing. >> > > Very much agreed on this point. > > Russ %-) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/cc40ed4d-fb21-48e5-822f-3ff5c7a4b810%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
