TehNrd

The new salesforce.com UI has been rolled out to all instances as of March 6th and the feedback is starting to roll in. Based on the feedback I have heard, direct and indirect, is that there appears to be four groups of people. A few people that love it, a few people that like it, a lot of people that are undecided, and a lot of people that don’t like it. This is probably not the distribution of feedback salesforce was hoping for.

So what do I think? I actually think it’s not too bad. Some people hate all of the bright blue, I actually don’t mind it. Yet the one thing that really bothers me about the new layout is the over use of light colors and the lack of defined spaces. All the different functional areas of a page layout seem to blur together making it difficult to find what you are looking for. One example of this is the detail section of a record. It is a giant white mass where the different sections are barely differentiated. The problem with this is that not all data is created equal. Easy to identify page block sections allow you to highlight and quickly find important information. This was lost with the new UI.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have some very rudimentary styling skills and I am no fancy pants web designer. So if I don’t have the artistic skills to build a super cool UI who am I to question a UI that was probably built by people who specialize in UI design? Me, I’m only a guy who has been using a computer since he was four years old. Using computers from this young age to the present has shaped my mind into one that can really understand how people interact with computers. It’s one thing to read and learn about this. It’s another thing to literally grow up with a computer in your face before you could even read.

What I have decided to do is tweak the new salesforce UI ever so slightly. It is not a major change as the new UI is pretty good. I simply think it could use a few refinements that would make it perfect and move that huge group of people who are undecided to the group of people that give the new UI a thumbs up. I believe the biggest problem with the new UI is that lack of defined spaces and this is what I have addressed with my changes. Without these defined spaces it is difficult for the eyes, and therefore the brain, to focus on and locate specific information.

Here is the new UI unchanged. LINK

Next is my new and improved version of the new UI. LINK

And finally there is an image calling out some of the minor changes that I think made a big difference. LINK

1) Brought back the page block style to the main detail section of a record. In all page blocks and related lists I also made the grey background a tiny bit darker which has helped the sections pop out from the background.

2) Added stronger page block section similar to the old layout but made the color much softer. Also have rounded corners.

3) Increased the border size of the related lists. This helps define the space better for each related list.

4) Got rid of that nasty blue table header. On a record with a lot of related lists it becomes quite distracting and noisy.

5) Increased the space between related lists. Again, to make each list have more a a defined space and be easier to locate with your eyes.

6) Increased the title size of the related lists. This helps each list pop and helps you find what you are looking for quickly.

As you can see these are very minor changes but I think the outcome is a very positive impact on the new UI. Are my changes perfect? Definitely not, as I’m sure it could still be fine tuned but I think the tweaks are a move in the right direction. What do you think?

Salesforce.com has always been pretty receptive to feedback. As they grow it has clearly become more difficult for them to respond to the thousands of customers they now support. With that said this is a major change affecting all users and I think (hope) it’s not to late to influence the design of the new UI. If you like the changes I have made please provide feedback, retweet this post, and spread the word.

Then again, I could be completely wrong about everything and maybe everybody loves the new UI. Let me know.

EDIT: Feedback on this has been positive so I created an idea on salesforce.com Ideas Exchange. You can view it by clicking here.

Heads up that if you are a Force.com/Salesforce developer or want to learn more about force.com development in the Seattle area there is a meeting this Thursday, the 4th.

The meetings as always will be held in the West Monroe Partners office located at:

1215 4^th Ave, Suite 1010

Seattle, WA 98161

When:  Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Start Time: 4:00 PM

This session will be an open forum so bring any questions, problems, and/or issues you have so we can discuss with the group. If we finish early, we can maybe grab a beer at one of the local bars downtown.

If you are interested even a little please stop by.

If you have read this blog before you will get the vibe that I am anti javascript. This is a fair assessment as I really don’t like using javascript. I can already hear the people yelling, “JavaScript is great! It can do so many cool things”. Yes, I know, but why add more complexity if I don’t need to? Here is the story of why JavaScript scares me.

This story starts back in my sophomore year of college when I took my first “programming” class. It was basically an intro to computers (easy peasy) but about half of the class was building websites with JavaScript applications. For these assignments we were required to use notepad to build the Javascript and websites. For someone that had never really done any sort of programming this was incredibly frustrating. One wrong character and you were hosed. Oh, and don’t forget this was in the dark ages before Firefox and Firebug. Make change, save, refresh Internet Explorer (blech!), repeat, repeat, repeat. Ugh, this was so lame and left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to “programming”.

Next up was CSE142, the intro to programming class that is supposed to weed out computer science majors. This was all java programming and we actually got to use an IDE that would show syntax errors before you compiled. This was probably the hardest class I have ever taken but it has also been the most useful class I have ever taken. After this I was feeling better about programming and things were looking up…… enter the infamous s-control.

Once out of school and at my job, after having an admin role for about six months, I decided to take a stab at updating some s-controls. What a pain. Flashbacks of javascript notepad editing flashed through my head. S-controls are so messy. I wasted hours trying to add basic functionality. Once I got it to work in one browser I realized it didn’t work in another (guess which one). This only reconfirmed my thoughts that javascript is a time suck and a pain to work with. Thankfully Apex and Visualforce were soon released and s-controls with javascript were a thing of the past.

So where do I stand today? When it comes to Force.com apps I still try to keep my javascript usage to an absolute minimum. I know a lot of the Visualforce pizazz is all based on Javascript but this is script I don’t have to manage. They make sure it works, and works across all browsers.

With all of this said and done I do have a confession to make. I feel like I am having an affair with my own beliefs but I am slowly falling in love with that little bundle of joy know as the jQuery and jQuery UI JavaScript libraries. Once you get over the learning curve of understanding the basics on how to using this library it makes working with JavaScript, dare I say, almost enjoyable. I am still a bit nervous about browser compatibility and the maintenance required but jQuery is lessening these fears. So yes, I am starting to open up a little more to JavaScript and I have some blog posts planned to demo the cool things jQuery can do in tandem with the Force.com platform.

I am now on Twitter. Hello my little bird friend.

I put it off for a long time mainly because I don’t care what people are eating for lunch or what movie they just saw. At least this is what I figured most of Twitter was about (and a lot of it still is) but this view changed rather quickly just a few days ago.

My little blog here in the corner of the internet gets traffic mainly from the developer.force.com discussion boards, from links posted on other Force.com related blogs, and the occasional search engine hit (Visualforce Popup is a hot one from search engines). It’s not a lot of traffic, but it is steady. After my Dreamforce 2009 Predictions post I saw a significant spike it traffic coming from Twitter. That blog post was tweeted by two different people and I saw site traffic increase three fold. It was easy to see the benefits of Twitter. Digging into some of the tweets I discovered what is a nice little ecosystem of Force.com/Salesforce.com users that actually post, errr…tweet, about relevant topics.

I have actually had a Twitter account for about a year now but I was one in the masses that had no tweets and no followers. Okay, so I had one tweet, which ironically was about me eating some pie. I remember the post (fric!, tweet) exactly and I was trying to explain to my parents, aunts, and uncles what Twitter was. I went on to explain it’s some lame micro blogging site where people post about everything they do. So of course I made a useless post about what I was eating. Oh how naive.

My main use of  Twitter will be to take advantage of this Force.com community, follow some trends, and post (oh my goodness… tweet) about force.com topics. Heck, maybe I’ll even toss in what I’m eating once in awhile……just kidding.

Now I ask for your help. Who are some great people in the twitter community to follow? What are some good tags to follow? I’ve already got #dreamforce, #force.com, and #salesforce. Please help this Twitter noob.

Click here for my Twitter page.

On Monday Apple released the next iteration of the iPhone and I have to say my response can be summed up as, “eh”.

2x Speed:
A faster CPU and more RAM is a nice addition but definitely not worth the cost for current 3G owners. Faster loading web pages would be nice but at the same time I think to myself, “I can access any website in the world no matter where I am”. The fact that I can do this with my phone is still pretty cool and faster is nice but the core functionality is the same.

Video recording:
My 5 year old Samsung flip phone that cost me $29 had this… 5 years ago.

Voice control:
Is nice but I would probably never use it. Mainly because the current iPhone UI is so streamlined I can access anything I need to pretty quick. And honestly the only place that I may use this would be in my car but it is so loud (18 year old Integra with a shot suspension) I have my doubts it could clearly understand me. I also feel sort of stupid talking at a phone, ya that sounds weird, but until it has a nice female British accent, can ask my how my day is going, and can carry a conversation I’ll stick with manual inputs.

Digital Compass:
This, with out a doubt, has the most potential. It will definitely help with navigation but I think this type of technology together with GPS and the potential for ground breaking mobile applications. I plan to have separate post going into more detail.

I think for all iPhone users the most excitement will come from the new iPhone OS 3.0. Finally, from a software standpoint, this will give very little to gripe about once it is released as it address many of the open issue since the original iPhone was released. Including:

Landscape keyboard for email and web. Yes!
Copy and paste. Rarely actually needed it but will be nice.
Download movies and TV Shows. Cool, will rarely use it.
Tethering. Cool, but we all know AT&T will charge too much.
MMS. Now my Mom won’t ask why my “fancy little phone” doesn’t get the text images she sends me.