Typo3 4.2 – Usability?

The first CMS-framework i ever used was Typo3. I liked the idea behind it from a technical point of view but was always disappointed from the user-experience. With Typo3 4.0, the Typo3 association hast started the “Cleaner Backup”-initiative. The release statement of today says something like, “We have finished the backup reorganization”. I have waited for this moment about 3 or more years and downloaded the Typo3 4.2 immediately, but….

yeah.. but what?

Nothing happened, this is maybe a bit unfair, but from a user’s view, really nothing happened, even simple design and UI-rules have not been followed and the old problems of the interaction design are still the same or worse (A nice new game is, “Find the Save-button”). I do not want to bash Typo3 or it’s developers, but the following points prevents me from using Typo3 as a base for new platforms.

1. Who has the smallest…… icons?

Is anyone able to explain me why are there still more than 20 buttons on the left-navigation-bar? What is about a common application-layout and a categorized menu? (have a look at Webedition)

The icons are to small and they are simply not modern (Even Joomla has this kind of glossy icons). Everyone knows the bigger-is-better Web 2.0 aesthetic and it simply works, if you do a direct comparison of web-user-interfaces (content-management) and you compare WordPress with Typo3, Typo3 simply sucks. WordPress is easy-to-use from the first minute and for more advanced users it still have advantages too. F.e. if you do a lot of publishing, you will be much faster with WordPress than with Typo3.
You might think i am comparing apples with oranges but from a editor’s view, where is the difference?. HtmlArea vs. TinyMCE, Categories vs. site-tree, these things are all the same for an editor…

2. Performance, User-experience
One statement in the release notes is, that the performance of the worflow has been increased. There were several points listened, but i want to mention one. The AJAX-driven-site-tree. Ok, it’s cool, but in 4th year a.O (this is my personal time period of Web 2.0: “b.O” means before O‘Reilly mentioned Web 2.0 and “a.O” for after O‘Reilly… ok sad joke) it should be a standard for rich-applications. But if you have ever worked with the “Categories”-Panel in WordPress you will recognize how bad the tree is made in Typo3. Even if i work alone on my local test machine(Core2Duo, 4Gb RAM, Win x64) the whole Typo3 interface is so annoying to work with, because of the high response times after an action, that i always think that no Typo3 developer uses his own system to work in a daily workflow.

I have an execise for you.

Take your “blog” and move it to Typo3, than write at least 3 articles a week with images inside and some common layout-elements like lists, after a period of one or two month move your blog to a blogging-software like WordPress or MovableType and do the same again. You only have to do this if you don’t believe me that you will never go back to Typo3 for this kind of use.

3. Workflow, no… not for developers, for those who have to use the system daily

From a developer’s perspective Typo3 is a great system, modular, extendable, Open-Source, well-written-codebase, etc. etc. But a developer only sees the system a short time and afterwards the editor’s have to spend most of the time with Typo3.
In the last years i have met a lot of Typo-developers and Typo-editor’s and the major problem i recognized is complexity.

Complexity, not only from a editor’s view, also the average developer is overstrained with the system. Nearly every Typo3-setup i see was not done by an Typo3-expert. Most of the time a small web-agency has to follow the wishes of their clients and lots of them have heared from Typo3. “Ouh i have heared about a CMS, it’s completely free and it’s superduper easy to use and you have nothing to build on your own, so it will be very cheap to build our new site with it….”. Wuäh…. i hate this statements from the marekting-executives.
The problem is, that all this “cheap”-setup’s are completely misconfigured and after a period of time, most of the editor’s are completely disappointed by Typo3. This is a real problem. I does not happened once or twice that a client asked me for a Typo3 alternative because they are not able to use it…. So, a Typo3-expert will have problems to sell his profession.

I think, this is not what the Typo3-association wants!

My suggestions

One solution could be, to preconfigure an easiest-to-use Typo3-setup that is as simple as WordPress to install and configure.

Next step should be asset-management. Have a look at the WordPress-image-upload. It should be that easy to include images, videos or sound.

Improve the speed of the UI and improve the UI-design. Have a look at libraries like extjs, i think it’s easier to develop a new frontend with it than to develop your own UI-solutions.

Reduce the options a user have. F.e. if i want to write an article with text and an image, why i have to choose a lyout before i could start to write. I want to include images, videos and sound on-the-fly during i write an article.

A tabbed menu should never be needed, i don’t think that an editor should be in a position where he has to make 3 great decisions for one article.

Increase the size of all fonts and start to layout Typo3 menu/sites from a typographic/interaction-designer-perspective.

Increase the size of all buttons and take well-designed icons.

Make heavy and right use of AJAX.

Animation is not an overload if you use it well.

Instantly show context-sensitive-help-bubbles if you move over a button, and do not use the typical “title” or “alt”-tag html solution, A real-context sensitive help should include more information than the button-name.

And finally, work on the steps to publish a new article. Why should i create a categorie or page before i can start to write an article. In Typo3 there is the possibility of “already-opened-documents”. Sort this documents in tabbed layouts (look at some of the great new RIA’s developed in the last months).

Some of this points above, are not the fault of the Typo3-developers. But an application like Typo3 could only be succesful if the editor’s like it. And the great problem of misconfigured Typo3-systems has to be solved. I think the decision that has to be made is, “hide complexity from the user” !