[xwiki-users] XWiki feedback
We chose XWiki back in 2009 as our wiki solution and we had successfully set up a complete farm of 4 wikis. I have been following the progress of XWiki since then, but unfortunately it was never utilized by our team, mostly because the users did not want to invest the time in learning a new WYSIWYG editor. In the end I was the only one who used it so the time has finally come to shut it down and look at an alternative solution -- perhaps a simple document manager. I saw a lot of potential in XWiki for our purposes, but didn't quite have the time to sell it to the others. Before I remove myself from the mailing list, I just wanted to put forward one comment as feedback: don't discount the learning curve that confronts users new to the wiki. Many of them are proficient in their ways of editing documents (which usually means MS Word) and don't have the time to invest learning new document formatting tools. If you want to capture a larger share of the market, look at ways of integrating with users' favourite editors; I think that would go a long way. You have a very impressive product, and I've been amazed at the level of commitment and professionalism that has gone into this wiki. Thanks for everybody's efforts and best of luck going forward. Trevor
Hi Trevor, Thanks for your kind words and the piece of feedback which is very useful :) I'm glad you liked the product. You may know that we had started XOffice (http://xoffice.xwiki.org/) a few years ago. IMO it was a very good effort to bring xwiki into the hands of MS Word users. Unfortunately our main committer on this is no longer active ATM… Before you go if you have ideas for "integrating with user's favorite editors" that would be great. Do you mean something like XOffice or do you mean something else? Take care, -Vincent On Apr 6, 2012, at 4:26 PM, Trevor Russ wrote:
We chose XWiki back in 2009 as our wiki solution and we had successfully set up a complete farm of 4 wikis. I have been following the progress of XWiki since then, but unfortunately it was never utilized by our team, mostly because the users did not want to invest the time in learning a new WYSIWYG editor. In the end I was the only one who used it so the time has finally come to shut it down and look at an alternative solution -- perhaps a simple document manager. I saw a lot of potential in XWiki for our purposes, but didn't quite have the time to sell it to the others.
Before I remove myself from the mailing list, I just wanted to put forward one comment as feedback: don't discount the learning curve that confronts users new to the wiki. Many of them are proficient in their ways of editing documents (which usually means MS Word) and don't have the time to invest learning new document formatting tools. If you want to capture a larger share of the market, look at ways of integrating with users' favourite editors; I think that would go a long way.
You have a very impressive product, and I've been amazed at the level of commitment and professionalism that has gone into this wiki. Thanks for everybody's efforts and best of luck going forward.
Trevor
Hi!
________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Trevor Russ [[email protected]] Sent: 06 April 2012 16:26 To: [email protected] Subject: [xwiki-users] XWiki feedback
We chose XWiki back in 2009 as our wiki solution and we had successfully set up a complete farm of 4 wikis. I have been following the progress of XWiki since then, but unfortunately it was never utilized by our team, mostly because the users did not want to invest the time in learning a new WYSIWYG editor. In the end I was the only one who used it so the time has finally come to shut it down and look at an alternative solution -- perhaps a simple document manager. I saw a lot of potential in XWiki for our purposes, but didn't quite have the time to sell it to the others.
I was thinking a bit about this comment. In general, it is hard to introduce any change in the workflow of an organization... if any exists! Concerning XWiki, our take is don't consider it as a "simple" colaborative environment for text construction and edition. This is a huge simplification about what XWiki can offer. XWiki is a complete development framework for online "extrem development" of applications. Collaborating the XWiki way is not just a facet of the collaborartion environment of an organization. It can easily be promoted to be THE way things are done: ubiquitous access through port 80/443, registered changes, trustees assignment... allow any organization to define and implement access, use and content creation policies with unprecedent easiness.
Before I remove myself from the mailing list, I just wanted to put forward one comment as feedback: don't discount the learning curve that confronts users new to the wiki. Many of them are proficient in their ways of editing documents (which usually means MS Word) and don't have the time to invest learning new document formatting tools. If you want to capture a larger share of the market, look at ways of integrating with users' favourite editors; I think that would go a long way.
You have a very impressive product, and I've been amazed at the level of commitment and professionalism that has gone into this wiki. Thanks for everybody's efforts and best of luck going forward.
Let me to hijack this thread to add my own two cents on this comment! Even though I'm not able to follow XWiki development in all its extent, I'm lucky to be still able to keep it working here and to have each day some more people appreciating what thinking the XWiki way can do for our team! Thanks to everybody!
Trevor
Trevor, I do think you must not remove yourself from this list! At least you'll be able to know what kind of issues users are facing! Cheers!
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Hi Vincent, Thanks and apologies -- I hadn't ignored your email response, I was just swamped with work (release time). I was only vaguely aware of XOffice but didn't have time to explore it, but it looks like it may have been what we needed (at least partially). What the users didn't like overall was having to relearn text formatting tools, when everyone is familiar with Word. eg. making headers, tables of content, and especially making tables. They found table editing particularly frustrating. Even simple things like keyboard shortcuts for bold, italics, etc. didn't always work (though that was because the browser would trap them). I regret not having the time to feedback all of this while it was going on; most of my wiki support work was done on spare (unbillable) time, and I had little of that of late. Unfortunately, we're a small team, so time to support the system and train users was effectively nil. I know that's not a good state to be in, but when there's limited time and we have to decide between writing code or learning how to use a wiki, writing code always wins out. I had used XWiki for myself, starting with things like note taking, procedure documentation, and doing some technical specification templates and using them to spec. out some projects. I thought it was a perfect way to collaborate, not only between developers but also with the client. But anytime there's even a perceived learning curve for a new tool, there's going to be resistance. I know that's a fact of everyday work, but it's especially so with a small bill-by-the-hour team. As for "ideas for integrating with user's favorite editors", I haven't really had time to think thoroughly about that. I don't know if it's something like XWord, or if it's just a matter of duplicating (to the extent possible) the Word interface within the XWiki GUI editor. I've used HTML editors before, so perhaps that helped me in putting up with it's general peculiarities. I've found, for example, making bulleted lists exactly the way you want is not trivial with HTML editors (as opposed to with Word). I think something like XOffice would go a long way to capturing the Word-oriented users, as long as it's unobtrusive and instinctive to use. I think efficiency of creating content is key more than the formatting frills available -- otherwise users will quickly become frustrated and give up prematurely. I know that once over the learning curve (as with any tool) it's a very rich environment for collaboration -- so the trick is to minimize that learning curve by starting out with something familiar. I don't know if that's helped any, or if I'm just rambling at this point. Thanks again for your attention. Trevor On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 16:49:06 +0200 Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for your kind words and the piece of feedback which is very useful :) I'm glad you liked the product.
You may know that we had started XOffice (http://xoffice.xwiki.org/) a few years ago. IMO it was a very good effort to bring xwiki into the hands of MS Word users. Unfortunately our main committer on this is no longer active ATM…
Before you go if you have ideas for "integrating with user's favorite editors" that would be great. Do you mean something like XOffice or do you mean something else?
Take care, -Vincent
On 04/11/2012 09:54 AM, Trevor Russ wrote:
Hi Vincent,
Thanks and apologies -- I hadn't ignored your email response, I was just swamped with work (release time).
I was only vaguely aware of XOffice but didn't have time to explore it, but it looks like it may have been what we needed (at least partially). What the users didn't like overall was having to relearn text formatting tools, when everyone is familiar with Word. eg. making headers, tables of content, and especially making tables. They found table editing particularly frustrating. Even simple things like keyboard shortcuts for bold, italics, etc. didn't always work (though that was because the browser would trap them). I regret not having the time to feedback all of this while it was going on; most of my wiki support work was done on spare (unbillable) time, and I had little of that of late.
Unfortunately, we're a small team, so time to support the system and train users was effectively nil. I know that's not a good state to be in, but when there's limited time and we have to decide between writing code or learning how to use a wiki, writing code always wins out. I had used XWiki for myself, starting with things like note taking, procedure documentation, and doing some technical specification templates and using them to spec. out some projects. I thought it was a perfect way to collaborate, not only between developers but also with the client. But anytime there's even a perceived learning curve for a new tool, there's going to be resistance. I know that's a fact of everyday work, but it's especially so with a small bill-by-the-hour team.
As for "ideas for integrating with user's favorite editors", I haven't really had time to think thoroughly about that. I don't know if it's something like XWord, or if it's just a matter of duplicating (to the extent possible) the Word interface within the XWiki GUI editor. I've used HTML editors before, so perhaps that helped me in putting up with it's general peculiarities. I've found, for example, making bulleted lists exactly the way you want is not trivial with HTML editors (as opposed to with Word).
I think something like XOffice would go a long way to capturing the Word-oriented users, as long as it's unobtrusive and instinctive to use. I think efficiency of creating content is key more than the formatting frills available -- otherwise users will quickly become frustrated and give up prematurely. I know that once over the learning curve (as with any tool) it's a very rich environment for collaboration -- so the trick is to minimize that learning curve by starting out with something familiar.
I don't know if that's helped any, or if I'm just rambling at this point. Thanks again for your attention.
Each tool tries to accommodate best a certain kind of usage. And although we try to make the best WYSIWYG editor available on the web, I must admit that XWiki isn't at its best when rich text formatting is the main target of the wiki. I can't say that I know your team, but in general when using wikis it's better to leave out formatting and concentrate on the content. This is why by default the WYSIWYG editor doesn't include too many formatting actions. Thanks again for the feedback and the support.
Trevor
On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 16:49:06 +0200 Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for your kind words and the piece of feedback which is very useful :) I'm glad you liked the product.
You may know that we had started XOffice (http://xoffice.xwiki.org/) a few years ago. IMO it was a very good effort to bring xwiki into the hands of MS Word users. Unfortunately our main committer on this is no longer active ATM…
Before you go if you have ideas for "integrating with user's favorite editors" that would be great. Do you mean something like XOffice or do you mean something else?
Take care, -Vincent
-- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
Hi, as a side remark, I've heard at least 3 times in the past week from various XWiki users that they were frustrated with the way tables were handled in the WYSIWYG editor. The main culprits were: - Not being able to align text in table cells - Not being able to bulk add columns and rows to an existing table - Not being able to merge cells Maybe these could be included as JIRA issues under the "ease of use" theme of the 4.x release? Guillaume On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 18:17, Sergiu Dumitriu <[email protected]> wrote:
On 04/11/2012 09:54 AM, Trevor Russ wrote:
Hi Vincent,
Thanks and apologies -- I hadn't ignored your email response, I was just swamped with work (release time).
I was only vaguely aware of XOffice but didn't have time to explore it, but it looks like it may have been what we needed (at least partially). What the users didn't like overall was having to relearn text formatting tools, when everyone is familiar with Word. eg. making headers, tables of content, and especially making tables. They found table editing particularly frustrating. Even simple things like keyboard shortcuts for bold, italics, etc. didn't always work (though that was because the browser would trap them). I regret not having the time to feedback all of this while it was going on; most of my wiki support work was done on spare (unbillable) time, and I had little of that of late.
Unfortunately, we're a small team, so time to support the system and train users was effectively nil. I know that's not a good state to be in, but when there's limited time and we have to decide between writing code or learning how to use a wiki, writing code always wins out. I had used XWiki for myself, starting with things like note taking, procedure documentation, and doing some technical specification templates and using them to spec. out some projects. I thought it was a perfect way to collaborate, not only between developers but also with the client. But anytime there's even a perceived learning curve for a new tool, there's going to be resistance. I know that's a fact of everyday work, but it's especially so with a small bill-by-the-hour team.
As for "ideas for integrating with user's favorite editors", I haven't really had time to think thoroughly about that. I don't know if it's something like XWord, or if it's just a matter of duplicating (to the extent possible) the Word interface within the XWiki GUI editor. I've used HTML editors before, so perhaps that helped me in putting up with it's general peculiarities. I've found, for example, making bulleted lists exactly the way you want is not trivial with HTML editors (as opposed to with Word).
I think something like XOffice would go a long way to capturing the Word-oriented users, as long as it's unobtrusive and instinctive to use. I think efficiency of creating content is key more than the formatting frills available -- otherwise users will quickly become frustrated and give up prematurely. I know that once over the learning curve (as with any tool) it's a very rich environment for collaboration -- so the trick is to minimize that learning curve by starting out with something familiar.
I don't know if that's helped any, or if I'm just rambling at this point. Thanks again for your attention.
Each tool tries to accommodate best a certain kind of usage. And although we try to make the best WYSIWYG editor available on the web, I must admit that XWiki isn't at its best when rich text formatting is the main target of the wiki. I can't say that I know your team, but in general when using wikis it's better to leave out formatting and concentrate on the content. This is why by default the WYSIWYG editor doesn't include too many formatting actions.
Thanks again for the feedback and the support.
Trevor
On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 16:49:06 +0200 Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for your kind words and the piece of feedback which is very useful :) I'm glad you liked the product.
You may know that we had started XOffice (http://xoffice.xwiki.org/) a few years ago. IMO it was a very good effort to bring xwiki into the hands of MS Word users. Unfortunately our main committer on this is no longer active ATM…
Before you go if you have ideas for "integrating with user's favorite editors" that would be great. Do you mean something like XOffice or do you mean something else?
Take care, -Vincent
-- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
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participants (5)
-
Guillaume Lerouge -
Ricardo.Julio.Rodriguez.Fernandez＠sergas.es -
Sergiu Dumitriu -
Trevor Russ -
Vincent Massol