Ask Questions and Find Answers
Important:
Ask is now read-only. You can review any existing questions and answers, but not add anything new.
But - don't panic! While ask is no more, we've replaced it with discuss - the new Liferay Discussion Forum! Read more here here or just visit the site here:
discuss.liferay.com
A few things for 7.3
Again, a little wishlist and some issues I found. I tried master and found some things, that bug me.
1) Search in System Settings: Maybe it is just me, but the search just doesn't work. Whatever I enter, no results. It works for instance settings, though.
Btw.: It would be very useful if properties where indexed/searched too. e.g. if I search for "Birthday", I would expect to find the User configuration since it allows me to show/hide the birthday field.
2) New tree feature
In general, thumbs up.
But when I switch to the page tree, why is there a back button? I would expect that it would behave more like tabs. I mean, a tab for the current "normal tree", a tab for the nav tree and maybe later on further tabs for other things, e.g. the site switching could also move to a "tab". Are there technical limitations?
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
I hate that dialog. It is slow and inconvenient. I understand that the old approach using a dropdown did not scale, but it was fast. And that Global is in "My Sites" is pretty weird too. Why is it called "My Sites"? It should be more like "All" (I am allowed to see). I need to switch to Global all the time. Why does it never show up in Recent?
I propose to add tabs to the top, "normal" menu, tree menu, "Spaces" menu when I go there, I see the 5 "recent" sites sorted to the top and the rest below.
4) Webcontent Display, Asset Selection
Thumbs up for moving the Scope selection from "Filter & Ordering" to an extra menu point. That one was always weird. Nobody found it and people where always stumped that to change the scope they need to click "Filter".
But wait: But how do I select webcontent from another Site now? That option seems to be completely gone?
5) Fragment pages/Fragments, Link target configuration
On Fragment pages, when I chose a link target, it gives me the technical options "Self", "Blank", "Parent" and "Top". While Self is pretty clear for everybody, but does everybody know what Blank/Parent/Top means? I actually stumbled about this when I tried the portal in German, the translations are pretty confusing. But instead of fixing the translations I believe that the technical names should be changed.
So, I propose to give them descriptive names like "New tab", "This tab", "Parent frame", "Top frame". Maybe an option to disable Parent/Top would be good, since these options are pretty useless without frames and confusing.
1) Search in System Settings: Maybe it is just me, but the search just doesn't work. Whatever I enter, no results. It works for instance settings, though.
Btw.: It would be very useful if properties where indexed/searched too. e.g. if I search for "Birthday", I would expect to find the User configuration since it allows me to show/hide the birthday field.
2) New tree feature
In general, thumbs up.
But when I switch to the page tree, why is there a back button? I would expect that it would behave more like tabs. I mean, a tab for the current "normal tree", a tab for the nav tree and maybe later on further tabs for other things, e.g. the site switching could also move to a "tab". Are there technical limitations?
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
I hate that dialog. It is slow and inconvenient. I understand that the old approach using a dropdown did not scale, but it was fast. And that Global is in "My Sites" is pretty weird too. Why is it called "My Sites"? It should be more like "All" (I am allowed to see). I need to switch to Global all the time. Why does it never show up in Recent?
I propose to add tabs to the top, "normal" menu, tree menu, "Spaces" menu when I go there, I see the 5 "recent" sites sorted to the top and the rest below.
4) Webcontent Display, Asset Selection
Thumbs up for moving the Scope selection from "Filter & Ordering" to an extra menu point. That one was always weird. Nobody found it and people where always stumped that to change the scope they need to click "Filter".
But wait: But how do I select webcontent from another Site now? That option seems to be completely gone?
5) Fragment pages/Fragments, Link target configuration
On Fragment pages, when I chose a link target, it gives me the technical options "Self", "Blank", "Parent" and "Top". While Self is pretty clear for everybody, but does everybody know what Blank/Parent/Top means? I actually stumbled about this when I tried the portal in German, the translations are pretty confusing. But instead of fixing the translations I believe that the technical names should be changed.
So, I propose to give them descriptive names like "New tab", "This tab", "Parent frame", "Top frame". Maybe an option to disable Parent/Top would be good, since these options are pretty useless without frames and confusing.
Hi Christoph!
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
I hate that dialog.
Right.. Me too!!
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
I hate that dialog.
Right.. Me too!!
Wait what?
But how do I select webcontent from another Site now? That option seems to be completely gone?
If that's true, Liferay have completely messed up. IS that asset publisher? Sharing content across sites is one of the biggest reasons to use Liferay.
Thumbs up for the dialog being slow ... but removing it wouldn't be the appropriate solution. We've been here before with the tree. The tree was "slow" so remove it (Grrrrrr!), then bring it back and make a mess of it.
The solution isn't to remove things because they are slow. Make them work! Make them fast. Lazy load I dunno, but for the love of common sense stop removing stuff because it's slow. So out here in the real world, removing stuff has consequences. All those users making the switch to 7.1 will spend the next 4 years WITHOUT a tree. The users upgrading to 7.2 will also be without the tree. That's two versions over 8 years that now don't have a tree!! Being brutally honest I may never get 7.3 to my users. We may be stuck with 7.2 for another 4 years. If we do 7.2 we may not upgrade until Liferay 8 or 8.1.
But removing stuff because something is slow has real impact. It takes effort to defend those features against the whims of a select few. It takes time for the engineers to put back what was taken away and have you ever tried to re-pack something into a box once you've taken it out? It's pretty hard to get the thing back in the box as it was before.
Do what's best for the community, if something is slow find a way to make it fast without removing it and adding it back and removing it and adding it back. Yes I hate the slowness of the UI ... please don't confuse that for hate of the feature, it's not the feature it's the way it was engineered. Liferay is vastly over-engineered. Just lazy load it and speed it up but don't try to remove it please.
We need a community sandbox for these kinds of "I hate it, junk it" experiments.
But how do I select webcontent from another Site now? That option seems to be completely gone?
If that's true, Liferay have completely messed up. IS that asset publisher? Sharing content across sites is one of the biggest reasons to use Liferay.
Thumbs up for the dialog being slow ... but removing it wouldn't be the appropriate solution. We've been here before with the tree. The tree was "slow" so remove it (Grrrrrr!), then bring it back and make a mess of it.
The solution isn't to remove things because they are slow. Make them work! Make them fast. Lazy load I dunno, but for the love of common sense stop removing stuff because it's slow. So out here in the real world, removing stuff has consequences. All those users making the switch to 7.1 will spend the next 4 years WITHOUT a tree. The users upgrading to 7.2 will also be without the tree. That's two versions over 8 years that now don't have a tree!! Being brutally honest I may never get 7.3 to my users. We may be stuck with 7.2 for another 4 years. If we do 7.2 we may not upgrade until Liferay 8 or 8.1.
But removing stuff because something is slow has real impact. It takes effort to defend those features against the whims of a select few. It takes time for the engineers to put back what was taken away and have you ever tried to re-pack something into a box once you've taken it out? It's pretty hard to get the thing back in the box as it was before.
Do what's best for the community, if something is slow find a way to make it fast without removing it and adding it back and removing it and adding it back. Yes I hate the slowness of the UI ... please don't confuse that for hate of the feature, it's not the feature it's the way it was engineered. Liferay is vastly over-engineered. Just lazy load it and speed it up but don't try to remove it please.
We need a community sandbox for these kinds of "I hate it, junk it" experiments.
Ahem. Some big priorities.
1) Alloy Editor. Whatever it takes, be that stripping it down and starting again or fresh eyes. Something is going very badly wrong with how Alloy Editor is being managed. It's absolutely a process issue not a people issue. The AE team are very smart, some of the smartest programmers I've seen. The problem is it's not being looked at holistically. If there's a problem with images for example, the left padding is fixed by one guy, the right padding is fixed by another. There's little time to test it right, so the padding was added to the editor mode only and not the resulting content output or visa versa. It's not being looked at from a users perspective.
It's an issue with Liferay in general ... piecemeal. So make a focus group, a group of people who edit content all day and that's all they do for their organization. They'll soon tell you that their punctuation is being stripped upon publishing content!! Those people will soon let you know how frustrating the editor is. And if you tell those users the editor is meant to be minimal so it gets out of their way they will give you 100 examples of how lack of features stop them doing their job. It has been that way for 4 years, it's not getting much better.
2) Did I mention the editor? Go back to CKEditor . Look products are recalled all the time. Create the time and space needed to fix the product without impacting users. It's broken, call it what it is and replace it with CK Editor until it is working again. Because the fixes are breaking it more and we get stuck with those breaking fixes for months if not years!
3) Calendar
4) Message Boards, to compete in today's field of boards.
5) Importing content from other systems.
6) Document management (for the love of everyone ... rename the title field to "filename" and give us a title field) at least do that. Provide out of the box some ADT's for asset publisher for displaying lists of documents. Oh My Stars this is one of our biggest problems. Users using web content to create lists of links to documents, because the asset publisher just isn't intuitive right away. We end up with people renaming other people's documents or moving them or typoing the link and then "the document won't load" ... well if we had document listing ADT's out of the box, maybe we wouldn't need hyperlinks?? When these document link issues come in one day I might go no filter and tell them yes actually Sharepoint lists are much better . Don't use Liferay for documents. Because document management suuuuuuucks. Already we had to push for the validator to be turned off because this issue of broken links stops users publishing web content.
But seriously let's get the document title field renamed to filename and move the heck on, you see tickets going back to Liferay 5 on that issue.
1) Alloy Editor. Whatever it takes, be that stripping it down and starting again or fresh eyes. Something is going very badly wrong with how Alloy Editor is being managed. It's absolutely a process issue not a people issue. The AE team are very smart, some of the smartest programmers I've seen. The problem is it's not being looked at holistically. If there's a problem with images for example, the left padding is fixed by one guy, the right padding is fixed by another. There's little time to test it right, so the padding was added to the editor mode only and not the resulting content output or visa versa. It's not being looked at from a users perspective.
It's an issue with Liferay in general ... piecemeal. So make a focus group, a group of people who edit content all day and that's all they do for their organization. They'll soon tell you that their punctuation is being stripped upon publishing content!! Those people will soon let you know how frustrating the editor is. And if you tell those users the editor is meant to be minimal so it gets out of their way they will give you 100 examples of how lack of features stop them doing their job. It has been that way for 4 years, it's not getting much better.
2) Did I mention the editor? Go back to CKEditor . Look products are recalled all the time. Create the time and space needed to fix the product without impacting users. It's broken, call it what it is and replace it with CK Editor until it is working again. Because the fixes are breaking it more and we get stuck with those breaking fixes for months if not years!
3) Calendar
4) Message Boards, to compete in today's field of boards.
5) Importing content from other systems.
6) Document management (for the love of everyone ... rename the title field to "filename" and give us a title field) at least do that. Provide out of the box some ADT's for asset publisher for displaying lists of documents. Oh My Stars this is one of our biggest problems. Users using web content to create lists of links to documents, because the asset publisher just isn't intuitive right away. We end up with people renaming other people's documents or moving them or typoing the link and then "the document won't load" ... well if we had document listing ADT's out of the box, maybe we wouldn't need hyperlinks?? When these document link issues come in one day I might go no filter and tell them yes actually Sharepoint lists are much better . Don't use Liferay for documents. Because document management suuuuuuucks. Already we had to push for the validator to be turned off because this issue of broken links stops users publishing web content.
But seriously let's get the document title field renamed to filename and move the heck on, you see tickets going back to Liferay 5 on that issue.
Have any of these been opened as feature requests on issues.liferay.com?
Having tickets opened and getting the community to vote on them will go a lot farther towards making them happen than listing them here... I don't want to sound like I'm poo-pooing any of the ideas, I just think that will help getting the appropriate eyeballs on the requests. I don't know how widely viewed generic posts like this might be.
Those are the common HTML target values; it makes sense (at least to me) to have them closely tied to the HTML targets since that is how they will be presented.
Having tickets opened and getting the community to vote on them will go a lot farther towards making them happen than listing them here... I don't want to sound like I'm poo-pooing any of the ideas, I just think that will help getting the appropriate eyeballs on the requests. I don't know how widely viewed generic posts like this might be.
it gives me the technical options "Self", "Blank", "Parent" and "Top".
Those are the common HTML target values; it makes sense (at least to me) to have them closely tied to the HTML targets since that is how they will be presented.
David H Nebinger:
No, I rather post them here because Lee Jordan is right. JIRA Feature requests are kinda useless. I have come to the conclusion that it only makes sense when somebody tells me *here*: "We like the idea, please create a jira for that",
Have any of these been opened as feature requests on issues.liferay.com?
Those are the common HTML target values; it makes sense (at least to me) to have them closely tied to the HTML targets since that is how they will be presented.Sure, for us technical people. IMHO that historic naming was bad from the start. Why is it even called "blank"? "_newWindow" or something like that would have been far more clear. Anyway: The target audience are quite often non technical people with no or minimal html knowledge at all. For them, a better naming would be quite the improvement. On the other hand, technical people will quickly understand the wording/mapping and won't have a problem with it either.
Hi,Thanks for the feedback.I have a couple of comments regarding some of the points you mention:3) Switch sites / Go to other space -> We are rethinking how to move through different sites/spaces, so we hope we solve the issues you're mentioning. Though I have to tell you that it won't be in the first GA of 7.3
4) "But how do I select webcontent from another Site now?"-> by your comment about (3), I'm assuming you've been playing around with master, right? in a web content display, when you have to select a specific web content and you want one from a different site, just use the breadcrumb to move one level above (workspaces it is saying right now) and from there you'll be able to navigate to the site you want to select from.
4) "But how do I select webcontent from another Site now?"-> by your comment about (3), I'm assuming you've been playing around with master, right? in a web content display, when you have to select a specific web content and you want one from a different site, just use the breadcrumb to move one level above (workspaces it is saying right now) and from there you'll be able to navigate to the site you want to select from.
ad 3) Thanks for the info. Note: I am not really assuming that any of my comments make it into 7.3 (well except for minor cosmetic fixes)
ad 4) Ah. Understand. Yes, the breadcrumb works. But I think that scope tab will cause confusion here. Since there is now a scope tab, I expected to be able to select the scope there. The breadcrumb is a bit subtle. IMHO that scope tab should be removed again and basically be merged into the breadcrumb (or a button next to it). Maybe a help icon next to the breadcrumb could be helpful? I am just pondering, how the switch site feature could be made more visible.
ad 4) Ah. Understand. Yes, the breadcrumb works. But I think that scope tab will cause confusion here. Since there is now a scope tab, I expected to be able to select the scope there. The breadcrumb is a bit subtle. IMHO that scope tab should be removed again and basically be merged into the breadcrumb (or a button next to it). Maybe a help icon next to the breadcrumb could be helpful? I am just pondering, how the switch site feature could be made more visible.
"Have any of these been opened as feature requests on issues.liferay.com?"
Feature requests largely get ignored. Features with 1 vote get implemented and features with 25 get ignored. The system is broken.
On Fragment pages, when I chose a link target, it gives me the technical options "Self", "Blank", "Parent" and "Top". While Self is pretty clear for everybody, but does everybody know what Blank/Parent/Top means?
Case in point:
https://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-82271 - Alloy Editor: Link Target Wording is Obscure
Feature requests largely get ignored. Features with 1 vote get implemented and features with 25 get ignored. The system is broken.
On Fragment pages, when I chose a link target, it gives me the technical options "Self", "Blank", "Parent" and "Top". While Self is pretty clear for everybody, but does everybody know what Blank/Parent/Top means?
Case in point:
https://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-82271 - Alloy Editor: Link Target Wording is Obscure
I put another ticket in to request toggle controls on desktop. It;s starting to sound like "Get Brexit Done". But seriously, this one should be a no brainer it shouldn't have taken 10 years to implement this feature. This is a feature that doesn't need to be implemented, it's just stubbornness (I already contributed code to fix the issue) and it takes all of a few minutes to activate. Nobody is taking it seriously and it's a big user complaint.
Have Liferay considered using uservoice.com? While not all feature requests can be done and while JIRA's voting system clearly doesn't work, I really think uservoice might serve us well.
I think some of the stuff we raise too, we're not stating unreasonable gripes, take this from 7 months ago. What good is a time out message that itself times out? https://liferay.dev/forums/-/message_boards/message/113739490
Have Liferay considered using uservoice.com? While not all feature requests can be done and while JIRA's voting system clearly doesn't work, I really think uservoice might serve us well.
I think some of the stuff we raise too, we're not stating unreasonable gripes, take this from 7 months ago. What good is a time out message that itself times out? https://liferay.dev/forums/-/message_boards/message/113739490
Attachments:
"The target audience are quite often non technical people"
This all day ... _blank? In the web content templates I create for our users I label "Link Behavior" as "New Window", "Same Window", "Disable Link" and then translate that for the target in HTML with the template. Please don't remove web content templates. It's the only sanity and hope we have left to avoid having ours users interact with Alloy Editor.
Users hate ellipsis menus too. Some take to them naturally some don't. Generally I feel like Liferay is getting harder for people to use. I can't imagine being able to easily train users on content sets, they do struggle with asset publisher now but I feel like I do get small wins with some users. Display pages, page templates, site templates, templates for this that and the other and let's change the names of the templates, we had ADT's so let's use widget templates now ... just to make it a more fun game for people to play to guess what's what.
This all day ... _blank? In the web content templates I create for our users I label "Link Behavior" as "New Window", "Same Window", "Disable Link" and then translate that for the target in HTML with the template. Please don't remove web content templates. It's the only sanity and hope we have left to avoid having ours users interact with Alloy Editor.
Users hate ellipsis menus too. Some take to them naturally some don't. Generally I feel like Liferay is getting harder for people to use. I can't imagine being able to easily train users on content sets, they do struggle with asset publisher now but I feel like I do get small wins with some users. Display pages, page templates, site templates, templates for this that and the other and let's change the names of the templates, we had ADT's so let's use widget templates now ... just to make it a more fun game for people to play to guess what's what.
Hey Christoph,Thanks for checking out master and sending your feedback. Here are some additional comments you your suggestions:1) Search in System Settings
If this is not working it's a glitch or maybe a bug. Try to reindex and if it's still happening please report a bug.
BTW, the properties are already being indexed and used when searching.
2) New tree feature. Why is there a back button?
The reason why there is a back button and not a tab is because the tree is only relevant to the current site, while the whole menu includes the control panel.
In any case, the current design is just the first step. Our designers are working on some more ambitious designs that I believe solve your concern. Hopefully we'll have time to implement them for 7.3
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
We also agree
Our designers are also working on some proposals for this as part of the improved designs for the product menu.
5) Fragment pages/Fragments, Link target configuration
I agree. I remember there was some debate about whether to use one approach or the other. Ultimately the team got feedback that "marketers" (one of our more demanding target users for page creation) are familiar with the technical terms for link targets, which influenced the decision. In any case, I'll bring up your comment, since maybe the decision should be reconsidered before 7.3 is out.
If this is not working it's a glitch or maybe a bug. Try to reindex and if it's still happening please report a bug.
BTW, the properties are already being indexed and used when searching.
2) New tree feature. Why is there a back button?
The reason why there is a back button and not a tab is because the tree is only relevant to the current site, while the whole menu includes the control panel.
In any case, the current design is just the first step. Our designers are working on some more ambitious designs that I believe solve your concern. Hopefully we'll have time to implement them for 7.3
3) Switch sites / Go to other space
We also agree
Our designers are also working on some proposals for this as part of the improved designs for the product menu.5) Fragment pages/Fragments, Link target configuration
I agree. I remember there was some debate about whether to use one approach or the other. Ultimately the team got feedback that "marketers" (one of our more demanding target users for page creation) are familiar with the technical terms for link targets, which influenced the decision. In any case, I'll bring up your comment, since maybe the decision should be reconsidered before 7.3 is out.
Jorge Ferrer:
Yes, after Reindex, the search works. This is reproducible. At least for systems with embedded Elasticsearch this seems to be normal behavior.
Hey Christoph,Thanks for checking out master and sending your feedback. Here are some additional comments you your suggestions:1) Search in System Settings
If this is not working it's a glitch or maybe a bug. Try to reindex and if it's still happening please report a bug.
BTW, the properties are already being indexed and used when searching.
https://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-106888
I just wanted to share my opinion here, the back button is just a minor issue and I think it would be smoother without it. But I am really glad to hear that "Switch space" is reworked.
2 + 3) ...
5) Fragment pages/Fragments, Link target configuration
I agree. I remember there was some debate about whether to use one approach or the other. Ultimately the team got feedback that "marketers" (one of our more demanding target users for page creation) are familiar with the technical terms for link targets, which influenced the decision. In any case, I'll bring up your comment, since maybe the decision should be reconsidered before 7.3 is out.
It probably doesn't matter a lot in English, but at least the German translations were horrible. You either have to leave them in English or translate them according to their meaning/behavior and not just translate the words.
How likely is it that we can now affect 7.3? Being that it's almost released?
Not almost, it is. Fetch it from sourceforge.
But consider that the feature list for 7.3 would have been frozen some time ago so the engineering teams would have a target to strive for. It doesn't mean that the wishlist items can't or won't happen going forward if you don't see them in play now.
Keep throwing the ideas out, keep up the pressure, something will stick...
But consider that the feature list for 7.3 would have been frozen some time ago so the engineering teams would have a target to strive for. It doesn't mean that the wishlist items can't or won't happen going forward if you don't see them in play now.
Keep throwing the ideas out, keep up the pressure, something will stick...
Nice. I will take a look at it at the weekend.
I actually was pretty sure that my comments would not make it into 7.3, but as you said, we need to mention what we like and what bugs us ...
I actually was pretty sure that my comments would not make it into 7.3, but as you said, we need to mention what we like and what bugs us ...
Liferay 8 will be amazing.
Copyright © 2025 Liferay, Inc
• Privacy Policy
Powered by Liferay™