Feed Sign in with OpenID OpenID

Simon Willison’s Weblog

The little things

We put together a bookmarklet today that allows our editing staff to jump instantly from looking at a story on one of our web sites to the interface for editing it within our current content management system. It took about 5 minutes development time, plus an extra 15 minutes spent showing it to people, setting it up on machines and demonstrating how it works. It’s hard to over state how well this new shortcut was received by the people who spend hours every day using the system. For end users, a little feature can sometimes go a very long way.

Posted 13th November 2003 at 12:26 am

This is The little things by Simon Willison, posted on 13th November 2003.

View blog reactions

Next: Easy installers for PHP scripts

Previous: Roundup of roundups

6 comments

  1. Which content management system do you use? Which do you reccomend?

    Jason - 13th November 2003 13:27 - #

  2. The current system was developed in-bouse using mod_perl several years ago. We are currently developing a new one with mod_python. I can't really recommend a single CMS because the one you pick depends very much on what you want to do with it - the cms mailing list is a good place to ask around though.

    Simon Willison - 13th November 2003 15:49 - #

  3. That is a very good idea indeed!

    I think I may make a bookmarklet with the same purpose (to use with the CMS I'm currently developing). I've thought about making "edit this" buttons if you're logged in, but this is nicer in a way (and much simpler!).

    Eivind Lie Nitter - 13th November 2003 16:53 - #

  4. Those are some great sites (I kinda liked the "women of KU site" the best, but...), you're doing some nice work there. Congrats!

    Keith - 13th November 2003 17:30 - #

  5. Thanks, but I can't really take the credit for any of them yet - I worked on the photo galleries system used on KUSports and the coupons page on ljworld.com but other than that the stuff I've done since I got here has all been behind the scenes work on the new CMS, which isn't live yet. I'm joining a great team.

    Simon Willison - 13th November 2003 17:37 - #

  6. Simon,

    We're currently integrating a 3rd party CRM web app with an in-house marketing web site using bookmarklets.

    Most people have a hard time groking what a bookmarklet does. When they get it, they love it.

    The best non-geek one I show them is Udell's library lookup.

    If you believe at all in Small pieces loosely joined, I think that this kind of thing is a powerful argument for more XBL support.

    Keep spreadin' the Universal Republic of Love.

    Jeremy Dunck - 13th November 2003 23:01 - #

Comments are closed.

Previously hosted at http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/11/13/theLittleThings

A django site