[HN Gopher] Jolie: A drop-in replacement of Django Admin
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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.
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