A couple of useful notes

  • Resolved Hassan

    (@hassanhamm)


    11 years, 7 months ago

    This is a great plugin, thank you for the effort!
    May I suggest a couple of things?

    -Aesthetics:
    1. The Today, Last x days, etc. buttons in the light theme have the default OS buttons look. They don’t look good. Consider applying the class .button to them to make them look like the normal light WordPress buttons

    2. The side boxes (divs) with the class .note in the plugin’s settings page have this weirdo background gradient and funny looking font that totally doesn’t fall under ANY WordPress design guideline. This breaks the user experience, IMHO. You should just make your plugin seamlessly integrate with wp-admin style. Good plugins are those which are not easily recognized as “plugins”. Just apply the default meta box style to those divs instead

    3. The settings page <h3> headings are wrapped in <u></u>? Why? These <u></u> are deprecated HTML elements AFAIK, and you should use <h3> elements alone and then give them an underline style (if you want) through CSS. But you shouldn’t make them underlined anyway; rather leae them normal <h3> headings– just like in the default WordPress settings pages. So, yeah.. remove those <u></u> please

    4. Also the <hr> elements below each settings group is redundant, I believe. Just remove them; they contribute to a more cluttered UI

    5. The Update Options and Clear Cache buttons at the end of the settings page both use the same class, i.e. button-primary. Update Options is the primary button and it’s the one that should have the class button-primary (also no need to add button class if you’re already applying the button-primary class to the same element). Clear Cache button on the other hand should just use the button class because it is not a primary action button in that page. (Thinking about it, it should not be in the same row with Update Options button because that tells the user something like “you need to click either this button or the other”– much like OK and Cancel buttons. You can move it to be in the same row of the Cache Time option; that should be a more logical placement)

    -i18n:
    I’ve finished translating this plugin to Arabic. However, some strings are not translatable:

    1. The title of the main dashboard meta box “Google Analytics Dashboard”
    2. The label of the Settings menu entry “GA Dashboard”
    3. The link text “Step by step video tutorial”
    4. All the texts and links in the side boxes with the class .note
    5. The labels which appear upon hovering on the traffic pie charts in the dashboard “New Visitor”, “direct”, etc.

    -Usability:
    1. the layout of the settings page is messed up when the admin UI is RTL (e.g. Arabic). There is a conflict with the two divs (the main content and the sidebar)– their float values should be changed from left to right and vice versa when detecting that the page is in RTL mode.

    2. The geo map in the dashboard could do with showing the country name on a tooltip upon hovering on the map of that country. Not everybody’s got an A+ in Geography, y’know ?? (Also make sure they’re translatable)

    I’m done with my rant! Thanks for a great plugin!
    ??

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter Hassan

    (@hassanhamm)

    Whoops! correcting myself for point #2 under Usability: the countries appear to be displaying names on hover, but only those which you have traffic from. Other countries in the map (with no traffic from) don’t display their names on hover.

    You could still enhance this behavior as well as add i18n support for country names.

    Country names are automatically retrieved from GA, I think country names are automatically translated by GA based on default language. Adding all countries will have a negative impact on speed with no immediate benefit.

    You will find all other suggestions implemented in my next release. I have some concerns about i18n suggestions because some values are directly retrieved from GA. (values like: organic, direct).

    Thanks for your great suggestions!

    Thread Starter Hassan

    (@hassanhamm)

    Thank you for the reply.

    Yeah, I guess you’re correct. If you’re getting those country names from outside the plugin (GA), it will be redundant to include them in the core code just for the sake of i18n. You can still however fix other texts that are not translatable which are from the plugin itself (numbers #1, #2, #3, and #4)

    Awaiting the update! ??

    Version 3.4 has been released, hope you like it

    Thread Starter Hassan

    (@hassanhamm)

    Yeah, it’s much better now! Thank you for considering my suggestions.

    …but wait! there’s more! ??

    1. The next and previous arrows on the dashboard for navigating top pages etc. are inverted in RTL. They look something like > < instead of < >

    2. There is a Screen Options button at the top of the Settings page but it’s empty. Was that supposed to show something?

    3. There’s no obvious visual indication as to which time period (Today, Last 7 days… etc.) is the one currently being viewed on the dashboard. Maybe highlight its button with a different color? Or completely change that button-based UI to make use of tabs instead?

    4. Also, just noticed that the default graph represents Visitors by default, and you can change that from the small links at the bottom (Page views, Bounce rate… etc.). I can see this easily getting unnoticed by many users. Highlighting the current active item or some other sort of visual/UI indication would greatly improve the user experience.

    5. The link text “Step by step video tutorial” is still not translatable? I guess it’s missing the text domain value.

    You can shove those in the next update!

    Also, you, sir, you deserve a present for your efforts. Where can I send you my contribution? i.e. the .po/.mo files for the Arabic translation.

    Thread Starter Hassan

    (@hassanhamm)

    Hey, btw why doesn’t this plugin have a changelog? I’d like to know what’s new before updating.

    There is one here: https://forum.deconf.com/en/wordpress-plugins-f182/wordpress-plugins-changelog-t519.html

    I’m still spending a lot of time on implementing new features, when i’ll have some free time i will also add a Changelog Tab on www.ads-software.com.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The topic ‘A couple of useful notes’ is closed to new replies.