Squiz Matrix design flaw?

(D Jackson) #1

Hi,


I just posted a new topic about how an experienced Matrix user managed to Trash our production website Site asset. We’ve discovered how he did it, & are discussing whether this is actually a fairly serious design flaw with the Matrix admin interface.



If you start your Matrix session by visiting the /_admin URL of an asset that’s a child of a Site, and immediately drag this asset to the trash, because all ancestors of the asset are also selected - including the Site in this case - they are all moved to Trash. The same behaviour occurs when navigating to an asset by use of the ‘binoculars’.



I appreciate that the ‘move confirmation’ window warns of affected assets, but I for one don’t think that it should be so easily to unintentionally trash a Site.



Thoughts?

(Dan Simmons) #2

We do get this occasionally, which is why link locking was added. You can lock links from the linking screen which will prevent anybody from changing them (eg. to lock all your top-level assets)

#3

You can also prohibit trashing in your user group preferences. But you would hope that you wouldn't need to do that for your admin users.
Accidents of course can happen.





Hope all is ok.

(D Jackson) #4

Thanks for the feedback.

(Warwick Barnes) #5

I'd say the fact that the Matrix admin interface selects an asset and its ancestors: both in the /_admin case you've described, as well as when using the binoculars icon, is a significant design flaw.


From observing our web authors, none of them understand why all the ancestor assets are selected; they just see that the right-click menu is 'different' (because they're dealing with a group of assets rather than an individual one). They then have to click elsewhere to deselect everything, then click again on the asset they actually wanted to select. It's time-consuming and error-prone, and has been one of the most consistent user-interface problems with Matrix over the years we've been using it.



The fact that Matrix opens the asset tree to the correct level, scrolls if necessary and selects the required asset, is all good. I just wish Squiz would remove the 'select all ancestors' feature.



Warwick

(Nick Ashton) #6

[quote]The fact that Matrix opens the asset tree to the correct level, scrolls if necessary and selects the required asset, is all good. I just wish Squiz would remove the 'select all ancestors' feature.
[/quote]



+1 for this

(Nic Hubbard) #7

[quote]
From observing our web authors, none of them understand why all the ancestor assets are selected; they just see that the right-click menu is 'different' (because they're dealing with a group of assets rather than an individual one). They then have to click elsewhere to deselect everything, then click again on the asset they actually wanted to select. It's time-consuming and error-prone, and has been one of the most consistent user-interface problems with Matrix over the years we've been using it.

[/quote]



I think that the select all ancestors feature is excellent. It shows the lineage of the asset that you selected, and has always been extremely helpful to see where in the tree an asset is.



But, I think what needs to change here is what happen when you then right-click on the chosen asset. The asset map should know that the user has just used the binoculars icon to find an asset. And that since the user did NOT select the parents of the currently selected asset (the system did), any actions (right click) should only be done on the selected asset, not to any selected parents in the tree.