What would you like to see in the blank space on the Panels Admin Dashboard

nice!

We've been discussing:
- a list of existing panels objects
- link to the permissions for panels content

Hope to see some input from people who are actually using Panels regularly.

Ok, my first comment is purely visual and has nothing to do with the content - so thats my disclaimer. When I first see this layout, and the headings "panel page", etc. I think...wow I'd love to see a thumbnail of the layout in the right region where we right now see nothing. However I do realize that there is probably no actual graphical element that could even show there.

So my second comment would be then...if we're going with a 2 column format (which I do think is good b/c short width columns do IMO make thing easier to parse on screen) I'd expect to modify the settings of said element "Panel page", "Mini pane" etc. within that region. So you click the title for what you want to create, by default the region on the left shows a default mockup of a panels display layout, and changes to show fields that you can now enter. This maybe is done with ajax? And maybe those fields are title, url, css id, etc...the items that you get on the first screen in existing Panels releases.

But to be honest I still struggle with "forcing" something into a region where we have negative space b/c we need to fill it in.

The thing that i feel confident about is that in order for Panels to be more approachable people need to understand what they're doing, visually. That they are building a layout. And I could see that right region slowly manifesting into the layout as you add settings.

Sorry if thats way off base, but I wanted to just share by gut instinct response.

+1 for a list of existing panels objects

Right now I find a bit confusing to have some duplicates between admin/build/pages/* and admin/build/panels/*, but the plan may be to get rid of admin/build/pages/* ?

Panels 3 is beginning to seriously kick a.. , I was impressed by the new integration with views in beta1 :)

a list of all panels created. It's a bit counter-intuitive that I create a panel page under the menu item "panels" but that I go to the menu item "pages" to edit it.
And with Mini Panels I get yet another menu item, so I can add also add them at 2 different menu items, but only edit them at one.
So a list of all created panels there would do nicely.

I have to agree here. Making the dashboard truly a dashboard. The more logical tasks we can put on one page I think the better. This definitely seems like an intuitive thing to see on the right.

Definitely would like a list of existing Panels pages here.

Had a little chat with litwol about this last week. His input expands on the idea of a 'list of panels' with a bit more detail. posted with permission :-)

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's the UX that's in my mind, see the 4 buttons available there right now (panel page, adv panel page, panel node, mini panel... ) currently those are links to create new panels

What i propose is to use that (or add another link to click) that will list all available panels of that type in the box.... but there's more

you can then click on each of the panells and it would expand down like an accordion revealing information about that panel
similar to what you can see in the task handler page

overall UX experience is "navigate through all the panel setting pages without leaving this page, unless you have to actually edit any of the settings. in which case you would be taken to the dedicated page with all the available options to edit
otherwise you remain on this page and you get a summary at a glance overview

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I like the idea of some kind of expanding to show summaries of settings so that you can make a specific choice as to what you want to change for that panel.

I'm thinking something like this:

this doesn't yet show a way to filter this list on a single panels type. Not sure which settings you'd want available there and if they even need summaries.

faking it with CSS :hover tricks here: http://www.yoroy.com/elders/drupal/panelsdashboardaccordion.html

for me it would be helpful If somebody gave a few good actual examples of what you'd actuall expect to see in place of the simplistic 'settingthings' in the prototype. Different for each panels type, few or many handlers. let's have some likely and worst-case scenarios and see what we can fit in there that will be actually helpful.

Some of my ideas in visual form:

You know, it's cool and all that you want to put something in that space, but you're assuming that the display will have enough room. In Garland it sure does, but what about if you choose another theme, maybe one that's not made so well and is just 375px wide? Maybe you shouldn't have anything there.

This is my first time downloading and installing the Panels module. See the screenshot but it appears the images didn't come through, also Advanced anel page is missing the "P". Also, it says I need to activate the Delagator module but shouldn't that text link to where to do that? It doesn't seem easy to use out of the box.

I also lost Panels Pages (I wiped the Alpha version I had installed.) Sorry if this stuff should be a bug report, but I'm pretty new to Drupal, so I don't know how to do that stuff yet. Just thought someone should know.

EDIT
I finally found the Delegator module under Other. I'm guessing it came with the Chaos Tools (ctools). Of course, I installed Panels which prompted me to install Chaos Tools, so I clicked ok, but it never said I needed to install Delegator until I got to the settings page above.
Interesting that the spelling error (mentioned above) is no longer there after enabling Delegator.

Thank you developers for making this wonderful module !

here, the link of the domo's related panels should be display.

It would be really nice to see two things:
1. A list of existing panels, as detailed above
2. Help text giving a general introduction to panels.

Perhaps this could be done using tabs?

BTW, I was just introduced to panels 3, was struggling through panels 2 alpha. Like it, but I am really confused: I use Panel Pages, and the Delegator was automatically enabled to replace Panel pages. Now I have a list of pages, and they dont seem to work. I guess it's a permissions thing, but this all seems pretty complicated.
Nowhere do I find a way to add a page via delegator, but panels still allows me to add pages ?!

Just a cleaner version of Merlinofchaos's sketches for now…

When moving the mouse over an element of the panels types list on the left, I'd like a salmple preview in the area on the right.

In the Big Blank Box to the right side I'd like to see: Generated Thumbnails of what was created and when that thumbnail is selected the option to preview the page, edit, or whatever else. Also next to the Generated Thumbnails i'd like to see a search engine to find certain content faster.

So think of it as 2 rows first being the one to preview the larger image of the thumbnail selected and the 2nd row on the bottom to preview the small thumbnails and to the right or left of that row have the search engine with the option to tuck it or hide it from view when it isn't needed.

Then for the different panel options: Panel, Advanced Panel Page, Panel Node, Mini Panel. Have the image display a thumbnail of the last page created or modified. Sorta like a History Tracker and when that is clicked on to Possibly display the history of what was created or modified in the Large Image Preview area with the option to go back to Thumbnail view?

Just an idea.... (-_-)

Another vote for a list of existing panels. Seems getting to my current panels is a bit of a trick here.

+1 for a list of existing panels pages. Doesn't have to be complex, just a basic list would be fine. And possibly links to the page where they are at, as long as they don't require arguments.

Help text is good too, but could just be a ? icon with the word Help in the upper right corner. One of my biggest pet peeves about Panels 2 was the huge wall of help text that always appeared at the top of admin/panels.

Now that Panels 3 has a new UI (which looks great, btw) does this task still apply? After all, there isn't a blank space anymore :) The list of mini-panels & panels on admin/build/panels is simple and usable.

list of existing panels would be lurrrrvly :)