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Usability

General discussion of development ideas and the approaches taken in the 3.x branch of phpBB. The next feature release of phpBB 3 will be 3.1/Ascreaus followed by 3.2/Arsia.

Usability

Postby availablelogin » Tue Dec 20, 2011 12:52 am

I think the "Logout [username]" link on the right is extremely confusing

I'm pretty sure thousands of people every day click on their username thinking this will take them to the profile management page

Then, they have to re-login, which is a pain in the a**

This link shouldn't change visually, but it should be split into two links:

phpBB/ucp.php?mode=logout
phpBB/ucp.php
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Re: Usability

Postby Arty » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:32 am

I've never heard of anyone confusing logout link for profile link. When you move mouse over link, it highlights whole link, making it clear that user name is part of logout link.
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Re: Usability

Postby callumacrae » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:55 am

Arty wrote:I've never heard of anyone confusing logout link for profile link. When you move mouse over link, it highlights whole link, making it clear that user name is part of logout link.

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Re: Usability

Postby naderman » Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:03 am

It has becme rather common though to have the user's name lead to a menu including logout and other profile options. Instead we still have the separate User Control Panel link. A change in that direction might still improve things.
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Re: Usability

Postby Ger » Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:04 am

Maybe something like IPB does?

Image
And when clicking the triangle next to the user name you get this:
Image

This second screenshot is a bit too much for my taste, but some quick links to profile, settings, etc. might be handy.

On a side-note: this seems more an Arsia than an Ascreus thing to me.
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Re: Usability

Postby callumacrae » Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:26 am

Ger wrote:Maybe something like IPB does?

Image
And when clicking the triangle next to the user name you get this:
Image

This second screenshot is a bit too much for my taste, but some quick links to profile, settings, etc. might be handy.

On a side-note: this seems more an Arsia than an Ascreus thing to me.

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Re: Usability

Postby naderman » Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:05 pm

Moved to 3.2 discussion.
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Re: Usability

Postby imkingdavid » Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:42 pm

I have never seen a complaint about this before, but I can see the cause for confusion.

I agree that instead of the "User Control Panel (X new messages)" link it should be the current user's username, and clicking on it should open a menu of some sort with quick links, such as UCP, Profile, and Logout.
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Re: Usability

Postby availablelogin » Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:47 pm

The best would be to merge "User Control Panel" + "View your posts" + the username next to Logout into one link called "Profile", that's getting standard as naderman says

KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid) is the basic principle of Usability

And keep in mind that not all forum users have our average IT level, I'm using PHPBB for a support forum and my users don't even know how to enter an activation code in a software, so don't expect them to wait for the tooltip to show up or to make the difference between "User Control Panel, their username and whatever else
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