[HN Gopher] Jolie: A drop-in replacement of Django Admin ___________________________________________________________________ Jolie: A drop-in replacement of Django Admin Author : sambalbadjak Score : 64 points Date : 2022-02-05 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.jolie.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (www.jolie.dev) | tkainrad wrote: | You may not like it but the regular Django admin is what peak UI | design looks like. | dfgsdfhsde wrote: | I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, because Django admin | does look dated. But I actually think Django admin is | excellent. Many times I've used Django not because I wanted to | make a webpage or use Django's Views... but because I have a | project that revolves around curating a database, and I want to | use Django admin as the UI for my sqlite database. | rasulkireev wrote: | It does look date, but damn, it is so functional. It just | does what it needs to, which is beautiful. | | Just like Calibre for book management. Looks super old, but | does everything so well. | | I would take functional over pretty any time of the day. | | That said, great work by OP. | [deleted] | thinkxl wrote: | it does one job and does it well | vdfs wrote: | In this case, It's also free and open source | dsnr wrote: | Exactly, not everything needs to have rounded corners with 20px | of padding. I also like the default design. | stavros wrote: | I even prefer the older admin style, before the refresh, as it | had higher density. It's amazing, though, it's UX is excellent. | It does exactly what you want, with zero hassle. | aliswe wrote: | Very nice!! Well done | matsemann wrote: | While a better interface is welcome, relying too much on Django | admin panel is a path best avoided. | | Great for small stuff, but far too often one end up using it for | too much. Extending it with more widgets, custom logic, fine | grained access. Quick in the beginning, very hard to maintain in | the end compared to a custom made view. | Klonoar wrote: | Agreed. | | A Django-specific skillset I found very important is to know | where that limit/line of the admin sits - you can push it very | far, but there's absolutely a point where it becomes | unmaintainable and more costly than building it yourself. The | line itself can be a bit of a moving target depending on the | project though. | | The Django admin is simultaneously one of the greatest tools of | the past two decades while also being a massive footgun if | you're not careful. | chimen wrote: | I only use Django because of the admin. | sgt wrote: | Then it is a very limited scope. The first thing I do on a | new Django project is to ensure the admin portal is long | gone. If you can't understand or work with your models from | the Django shell, something is not right. | dsnr wrote: | I only use Python because I use Django because of the admin. | pphysch wrote: | Yep it's a fantastic crud gui for the database, which frankly | covers a lot of use cases for a small business. | | But it's not a substitute for being comfortable working with | forms, templates, urls, requests and building custom views. | Time spent learning the django-admin DSL would be better spent | here, or learning the CBV DSL... | johnzim wrote: | Django admin has 2 modes of operation: | | In scope operation and extension: - Incredibly smooth and | effortless | | Slightly out of scope: - F U, buddy. | | It's amazing for so much stuff that it's honestly a superpower | for a tech or tech leveraged company, and great for prototyping | internal process automation. | | The trick is knowing when to throw in the towel and go purpose | built. I've definitely missed that boat at least once in my | career. | Daishiman wrote: | You can easily scale a company beyond 50 employees while | still using the admin and an occasional extra dashboard. | | It's definitely in my top 5 most valuable skills, and seems | like an open secret in the industry. | selectnull wrote: | I like it. Nicer design on top of the same functionality is | really what I want from Django admin. In contract to some CMSes | that change to much and in the process lose features. | tootie wrote: | Wagtail is a full CMS that is basically just a tarted up Django | admin | airstrike wrote: | Those interested in skinning / customizing the Django Admin | should also check out Grappelli which has been around for ages | (and the design probably shows, since it's more in line with "Web | 2.0" trends than the current flat-rounded-corners-bold-colors | language) | | https://grappelliproject.com/ | vgel wrote: | We used Grapelli at a previous $WORK, and regretted it. It has | compatibility issues, makes it harder to write custom widgets, | and doesn't actually look that good IMO. Was also hard to | switch off of. | pmontra wrote: | The demo screen is a dealbreaker. It's an admin tool. The new | interface shows 8 models. The old one has space for at least | twice as much. Imagine if Excel had that amount of padding. A 8x4 | grid would fill the screen. A 1x2 grid on a phone. | | To all designers reading this: We are not printing those screens | to frame them. We're using admin tools to do real work and we | want to see lots of information there to be fast. Maybe we | created those models ourselves. We know what to look for. I'm | sure that Django admin could be made to look better and some UX | could be improved. It's in part theming and in part redesigning | the control flow. Taking on the latter would be really | interesting. | | Edit: actually a problem with the home page of Django admin is | that it doesn't show enough information. A full screen browser | window displays a column of models and a lot of useless white | space. A multi columnar layout would speedup navigation by | displaying more models in one screen. And a search filter. | mperham wrote: | Any designer who does not understand and value the information | density in the design of a tool like this fundamentally does | not understand how the tool is used. | [deleted] | y4mi wrote: | the image preview is hidden on mobile, even though its the | objectively most important information on the landing page. I | can somewhat understand it, because its probably hard to put it | on that page while still keeping the clean look. But it doesn't | instill confidence in their design choices for an admin panel | either, honestly. | | I can see that some people would prefer this aesthetic, even | though i'd agree that having an admin panel with low | information density is kinda pointless | Zizizizz wrote: | This looks great! I thought the admin design was great | rossdavidh wrote: | Minor point: misspelling of "extensible" as "extentible". | aniforprez wrote: | The datepicker widgets are completely useless in dark mode. All | the dates except for those of the previous ones are white font | colors on a white background. Might want to check that out | | Other than that, it's a really cool project and could be pretty | useful for projects you want to churn out where the client is | expecting heavy admin usage | airstrike wrote: | Also hyperlinks are the same blue hue in light and dark mode, | resulting in significantly lower contrast for the latter | sambalbadjak wrote: | Credentials to view the preview: | | username: preview password: preview | stavros wrote: | Thank you, what were they thinking, not mentioning those | anywhere? | eclipticplane wrote: | There was also Django Jet - https://github.com/geex-arts/django- | jet - that was promising. While open source, it's effectively | abandonware as the folks behind it moved into some weird paid | admin/analytics dashboard builder. The original is under AGPLv3. | rcarmo wrote: | It looks nice, but wasteful of screen real estate. I do wish the | Django admin was brought into the current era, but not with so | much padding. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-05 23:00 UTC)