New settings UX - just great

[mheland]

Amazing stuff. Work of art, really. Thank you!

[XPGained]

See, I completely disagree. This is 1 of the worst changes that Ghost, in my opinion, have done. I was told the change was to ‘reduce clutter’ but really this has made it worse. I wish there was an option to toggle between this and the old UX.

[disgustipated]

Perhaps a work of art if youre comparing to a jackson pollock painting. i have to search and scroll a lot more than the previous menu. someone obviously put a lot of time into it but it can be greatly improved from a user experience perspective. if youre going to display all setting in the right, why even have the menu on the left? it would be much more clean if the left menu acted as a filter and only displayed the menu section you selected. its just too much noise as it is.

[thimiraonline]

Check this out

Feedback on new Settings UI

Yesterday, I installed Ghost version 5.69.0 and noticed a significant update to the Settings UI. I’d like to share my candid thoughts on this latest update. Initial Impression At first glance, I was impressed. It’s great to see a UI update after such a long time. (As I started exploring the options…) Current Impression However, my initial enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment. The new UI seems overly complex, with everything crammed onto a single page, making it appear cluttered and con…

New settings layout

I’m not really liking the feeling of the new settings layout, it just feels messy. i find myself getting lost with all the settings displayed on the right hand side. with all the settings displayed on the right it feels redundant to have the settings map/contents available on the left. the old settings layout felt more organized since you could click through and see only the specific settings you wanted to see. i feel like i maybe understand where the motivation for this change was, keep everyth…

[absolutely]

Respectfully, I hate it. It looks like substack - and you know what substack is? Confusing. I guess it’s just too much for my little adhd brain. I like Ghost because it’s simple - and this settings page is anything but. :(

[block]

Completely agree. This is not good design imho.

[block]

This post is probably sarcastic.

[mheland]

You mention what I believe is the ultimate UX challenge - how to surface functionality and options without overloading the user. Microsoft Office “Ribbon”, anyone?

I’ve been using Fastmail for many years - they had an amazingly fast and responsive raw-HTML interface. But, no, they had to put a materials framework in there with shadows on the buttons and what not and add useless features like snooze (“I’ll read it later…”) and gmail style tagging and… now Fastmail reloads the whole window when I browse folders and is frustratingly sluggish.

The new settings window solves one problem: new users (and I have many new users since I build Ghost sites for clients) could not find the options, especially Newsletter configuration & Members were really hard to understand for them. Ghost’s dual-use of members and newsletter subscribers makes no sense (initially) to many new admins. And the Theme configuration options were three levels down. Stuff that matters for “users” - not devs spending all day in Ghost.

The new UX surfaces these options, and I think it is extremely well done. Then we have the tabs in the right column which is so-so (ex Integrations) but I think this overall solves one really important problem. I would enjoy colour-coding of the sections in left menu, and the search can be improved.

[deanburge]

From what I’ve read in these forums, the new settings UI seems polarising.

[XPGained]

You mentioned that your clients could not find Newsletter configuration, but how does this new change help them? Just because they can search now?

Previously in the settings, it was quite easy to find the Newsletter configuration considering it was simply labelled ‘Newsletter’ just like it is now, as well as once you found it once previously, it’s pretty easy to remember where it was.

[Cathy_Sarisky]

@deanburge

From what I’ve read in these forums, the new settings UI seems polarising.

At last, something everyone can agree on! :)

[mheland]

Newsletters, type what you’re looking for… and everything related to newsletters shows up… smooth!

[absolutely]

I think color coding would be nice! Sad it was left in the new editor

[XPGained]

Just like when you could press CTRL/CMD F and type ‘Newsletter’?
It’s crazy to change a whole page like this for ONE upgrade.

[disgustipated]

and now you have to search or scroll for “newsletter”. previously it was just click gear and there was newsletters.

if you search for “site” it displays nothing at all from the site section, not even the header named “Site”…

if nothing else i feel this whole new settings view should be put behind an “advanced settings” view flag or something like that if you want to call it that. i feel like im a relatively new user since february and i do not feel the menu is helpful for newer users.

[block]

Is the same change Apple made with the new preferences in the last MacOS. The old one was so much better. Searching for options doesn’t mean good UX.

[mheland]

…and here is Fastmail - both a “search settings” and a left navigation, it seems to be tendances actuelles

[gmf]

Generally I like the new settings. The old UX you can to click back and forth to go to the different sections and you had to know which section had the setting that you want ahead of time. The new UX allows you to access everything from one page and click (or search) something specific from the TOC.

[BruceInLouisville]

It is absolutely designed like the new Apple settings UI. I could live with it, if the UI didn’t take the action links way off the right of my browser window, so I have to go to 50% view or smaller to find them.

And yes, it’s like many design changes – polarizing. A switch to go back might help. (A few other sites I inhabit added an option to go back to the “old” front page.)