Last week we mentioned that navigation changes were coming soon.
Today we’re excited to launch a better way to navigate your workspace! Now it’s easier for you – and your users – to find key features like uploaded files, get in touch with other users and locate tasks and milestones (for Business Edition).
We made a few tweaks based on your earlier feedback and rest assured we’re keeping all your desires in mind.
With these improvements, we wanted to:
- Tie your workspaces together and make moving between them easy
- Make navigation within your workspace clear and simple
- Highlight common and popular actions and bring them into easy reach
These changes are available now. To see them log into your workspace, or take a look at these screenshots from a sample standalone and business edition workspace.
For more details, check out our usermanual.
Standalone Workspace Navigation:
Business Edition Network Workspace:
Details about the navigation:
On stand-alone workspaces, the breadcrumbs allow you to navigate directly to your personal list of workspaces (also listed on your my.pbworks.com page), and view the list of workspaces that you have recently used.
On networked workspaces, the breadcrumbs allow you to navigate to your network dashboard and to the the workspaces that you have recently used.
These workspace tabs allow you to access the front page of your wiki, quickly navigate to your uploaded files and administrators will be able to view their settings. These features act the same, only the navigation has changed. If a user does not have access to your uploaded files, they will not be able to view the list of files on your workspace.
What do you think about these improvements? Tell us in the comments.
It messes up the top colour area for my wiki, where the logo is. It use to be on a light green background, now is on a dark background.
I like the top level navigation on the standalone version (i.e., My PBworks > Workspaces > current workspace), but I’m not crazy about the new subtabs below them (i.e., Wiki | Pages & Files | Settings). I find the latter confusing. These are confusing as they take the location of the traditional View & Edit tabs found on wikis. Also, the new layering of navigation tabs has messed up the color schemes we’ve been using in our page designs we’ve been using by introducing another color element.
Overall, the new look is too busy at the top of the page. I would like the option of turning off the middle set of tabs (Wiki | Pages & Files | etc.). Would that be possible in a future upgrade?
Since I’m often working on three quite different wikis alternatively, it’s very handy to be able to use the “Workspaces” tab to quickly switch from one to the other without having to have separate browser tabs open. Moving between the Administration and wiki pages will also be smoother.
I would prefer that the “Wiki” tab “remembered” where I was, so that if I switched to “Pages and Files” or “Settings” and then back to “Wiki” I would return to the same page from which I left rather than to FrontPage.
Fantastic! The changes really make PBWorks much easier to use, especially for the Business users. Looking forward to what’s coming next (Hopefully Multiple Projects!)
Don’t mimic Google. You have managed to expose several heretofore private wikis of mine. One site that’s now visible to everyone begins with “This web page is private. Don’t tell anyone and no one will ever know.
For reference: link to QuickTopic for conversing via email.” Now I’ve got to pull the plug on several sites….
Hi Jay,
The list of workspaces that you see is representative of the workspaces that you belong to and only you have access to that list. This is on your my.pbworks.com page, which is unique to you and no one else can see it.
-Kristine
Is there a way to assign parent/child relationships to pages, now, too? The breadcrumbs at the top kind of imply that, but I don’t see how to create these associations yet. Is that in the works?
Thanks! I love your product! Keep up the good work.
Looks great. However, when a company logo is displayed on the header, it breaks in Firefox horizontally, due to an extra 10px padding on the logo container. Hope you’ll fix that asap!
We make use of the free wiki, the changes make the wiki more user-friendly. One will have to get used to it, but that should not be a problem.
One small disadvantage is that the page has now shrunk in height, with the navigation bars added to the top of the page. F11 takes care of that.
Is great much more easy to surf if you have many workspaces.
Free knowledge like this doesn’t just help, it pmortoe democracy. Thank you.
As an active user what i would really like is the breadcrumb option. Normally i create pages and then sub-pages under it which can do go down to multiple levels. It would be useful if i have breadcrumb facility so that i can easily re-visit the intermediate levels in the tree structure for pages that i have created.
Hi: What happened to the Home button? How can readers contact the wiki owner? I don’t see a link anymore. Thank you. (BTW, it looks prettier now.)
HI Anne,
The ‘wiki’ tab is your home button. When you click ‘wiki’ it will take you to the front page of your site.
-Kristine
looks nice.
Can I change which items will show from my settings menu?
How do I turn the New Nav Bar off?
It is obtrusive and unnecessary. I would like some mechanism to turn it off.
The new navigation does nothing for my small site.
In fact, it ruined the look. I had used your amazing tool to skin my site based on logo colours, and it looked fantastic with a white-backed logo. Now, with the changes made for the new navigation, my logo just hangs there stupidly like a white brick on a magenta background.
I’ve since replaced my logo, but it still looks terrible.
I don’t like that front page was replaced with ‘Wiki’ as it confused students. We’ll work around it.
As someone who just moved over to PBworks and created a lot of documentation for our staff (which is now obsolete in terms of navigation and “click here” references), I certainly would have appreciated advance notice of the planned upgrade. Like other commenters, I also have a very unattractive page header – setting header color to white to circumvent that also deletes all the colored dividers down the length of the page – could those at least be separated out in the CSS?
Hi Tana,
I’m sorry you didn’t receive adequate advance notice. A newsletter and blog post were sent out last week previewing the changes.
-Kristine
The color scheme on my wiki has also changed. The colors were essentially swapped, meaning that where I had a light blue, it is now dark blue; and where I had dark blue, it is now light blue. If I go into the settings, it shows me that my color scheme is still my original color scheme. ????
I would still like to request the ability to turn off or remove the Pages & Files tab. My users do not have the ability to add or edit site content and therefore have no use for that tab. When they stumble into that area of the wiki, they are extremely confused and don’t even know how to get out of there. Having that tab front and center will cause more people to go into the Pages and Files and become frustrated with the wiki. The new set up works great for me as an administrator, however, it is not helpful for the site’s users.
Will we have the ability to rename the “Wiki” tab? The word in itself is confusing to my users and it would be better if I could name it “Home” or something like that. Some of my audience members are not computer or internet savy, and I need to make things as easy for them as possible.
I understand how the new set up can be extremely useful for some users, but please remember that not everyone uses their wiki for the same pupose. Options of whether or not to include certain tabs and features would be best.
The changes clutter up the top of the page. All of these used to be to the right side which disappeared when you made the page full size. Also the word WIKI is now dark blue on black. None of these changes added any features, since all these tabs were already available. Yes, we can get used to them but it is overall not as attractive as before.
I have a custom background which I use to make my wiki more aesthetically pleasing while working. However, There is now a solid strip of color across the top of the page where the logo and the three tabs (Wiki, Pages & Files, Settings) are located. This strip of color is literally blocking a portion of the background. Before it did not have this behavior. Its really distracting =(
Please let me know how I can revert or undo these new “Improvements”, thanks.
Is there an option to turn this option off?
Nice work to force free customers to have their work be viewed by everyone , security is much important than any other functionality , add ons to this site.
Would like my privacy back!
Hi Sultan,
We totally agree that privacy and security are king. In no way did this update change what people can see on your workspace. Your privacy settings were not changed.
-Kristine
I agree with many comments that the top of the page is very cluttered and unattractive. There are just too many tabs at the top of the page not to mention when Firefox adds yet another tab. I preferred the Settings and Pages/Files on the upper right corner. Will it be possible to change the navigation toolbar or turn it off in the future? These changes don’t enhance the way my students and I use the wiki…..but I am sure my students will adapt quickly.
I really dont like this new format, i made this free wiki to save stuff so i can go back and forth from home and school with out having to use a flashdrive.
I also received no notification of changes to come, for any of my workspaces. And why would you give your entire community of users only one week to absorb all the design change? Was it *necessary* to roll this out?
Why is there a ‘wiki’ tab? It seems you’ve gone to such trouble in the past to get rid of that word, and now here it is again. Took me quite a while to realize it meant “home.” Whatever was wrong with using Home instead of Wiki? At least you got rid of ‘front page’…that’s about the *only useful thing I can see in this whole re-design.
I also don’t like having four locations I now have to look around on the page to find the right tab, link, or whatever. Very confusing and not good instructional design. Most cognitive analysis will tell you that this design completely goes against principles of usability, ease of use, and how the brain learns and interprets visual keys and identifiers. If you’re going to use tabs, then everything should be tabs…but not on three different levels! Otherwise, put it all back into one location on the right. Two navigators?? Isn’t that overkill?
I certainly wouldn’t call these changes improvements!
This is too cluttered for me, and the privacy issues raised above concern me. I am STILL waiting for settings to allow me to default to URL links instead of PBWorks pages.
Not liking it. A wiki design should put the content front and center. This puts “PBwiki’s Wonderful Infrastructure” front and center. It’s distracting. People don’t come to a wiki to navigate between wikis, they come to read and edit the content.
All you had to do was just put a dropdown box off in the right hand sidebar somewhere. Boom, with two clicks I could then access any one of my wikis.
As it is you’re taking yet another slice out of the top of my screen, a slice almost as big as my browser toolbar, for way less functionality.
I like the changes.
FYI “recent blog posts” have not been showing up on my login page for weeks.
I’m not sure if this related to the nav changes or not but I’ve noticed that some old workspaces are displaying very recent change dates but when I go in there aren’t any changes at all. I believe what is going on is that the date counters in the change history aren’t taking the current year into account (for display purposes only, I didn’t get a notification). So, something that was edited on Feb 19/ 2009 is displaying as being modified “Yesterday”. Just thought I’d mention it.
In general, I like the changes, but the height of the breadcrumb tabs is excessive, and we lose screen real estate as a result. In my work as an interaction designer, we are always struggling with the compromises between vertical space (always precious) and usability (easy access to functions). There’s a readability limit, of course, to small type – especially for users over 50 – but your tabs could easily be smaller and still provide the same advantage.
I do NOT like how the new so called “navigation improvements” look. What a terrible update. Seriously will consider moving my company wiki elsewhere if this change stays.
I still wish the PBworks can add discussion pages like in wikispaces…
could someone please tell me how to get my photos loaded onto this site
how do I upload files to my group work space
I can’t believe this is really what users have been demanding! I am a happy user of PBWorks but more navigation has never appeared on my wish list or that of colleagues – things like security improvements (password policies), ability to copy pages between workspaces etc. must be more popular.
It would be great if PBWorks could create a collaborative “wish list” or “Ideas” type area for users to make suggestions in an open environment, rather than just commenting on this blog or via Twitter.
The wiki works well in most areas and the added functionality over the last year has been very beneficial – you have to be careful not to break what works well by changing navigation and appearance, in my opinion.
Dan
I find when inserting and formatting a table it is extrmely difficult to maintain consistence with formatting. Font colour, size, alignment, bullets, etc seem to ‘do their own thing’ and often once saved the final version is different to what you saved.
I work on a MAC and in Firefox but, since the update, I cannot use the EDIT tab. I have to right click and open in a new tab to be able to edit. Why is that?
So far, I think I like the old arrangement better. Now there’s more busy stuff at the top of the page, and my actual workspace is forced farther down the screen. My users are my high school students, and I can’t think when they’d ever need the new tabs or task bar at the top of the page. Home Page or Front Page would be better names for the Wiki tab. We’ve already gotten used to talking about our workspaces on PBWorks, so this is a funny and not particularly meaningful place to re-insert the word wiki. We know that our PBWorks website is a wiki.
I was perfectly happy to have the Settings and Pages and Files links over in the corner out of the way… I can’t yet see any advantages to the changes, sorry.
We found the old arrangement better. We don’t like more ribbons, tabs or breadcrumbs at the TOP of the page. In times of silly ‘wide’-screens this is a bad idea. No improvement. Something which was good got worse. And esthetically less attractive!
Home Page or Front Page are better names than “Wiki” for the tab. No improvement: worse.
It is not necessary to have the Settings and Pages&Files where they are now. The only thing that might be useful for many users is the “Workspaces” tab.
That said, please believe us that we are very grateful to join the PBWORKS experience.
Not overly happy about this. We only have one workspace therefore the top navigation bar is pretty pointless really.
Also all our colours had changed when we logged in this morning.
Had to remove our company logo as its just looking too busy at the top of the screen now.
It was quite clean up there but now pretty cluttered.
An option to turn off these new “features” would be much appreciated.
You need to concentrate on more important things like having images and files in separate folders then I wouldnt have to trawl through hundreds of images when i want to insert one into my page
I also think that the “Wiki” tab ought to be customisable. I know that it is a wiki, but I’m going to have to explain what this means to the 150 people who don’t know that they’re using one. I’d prefer it if I could rename it “Home”.
My colour scheme was also messed up, and correcting it makes the word “Wiki” black, and thus invisible – no bad thing, except it looks messy and effectively the link back to the homepage disappears (whatever it may be called).
Many of my users aren’t very confident users of online systems, so changes have to be made sensitively. Please consider a little more notice and a little more flexibility next time, especially when it comes to terminology. Also, all of our users (bar me) only ever access one workspace, and so the new nav bar is just in the way – it would be nice to be able to turn it off for users whose accounts are only associated with one workspace.
I always object when coders and layout ‘artists’, neither of whom has a clue regarding cognitive human factors, throw away huge amounts of screen space for no purpose, or absurdly confine an input box, and offer no way to adjust it to suit the true writer who needs space. (WordPerfect and WordStar used to point out that they gave maximum space for the USER to fill, which avoids scrolling and interrupted thinking. GoogleDocs does better. Microsoft browbeat everybody, and now we think that a big blank workspace is bad, rather than good for creative people.) End of rant.
I would prefer that the “new page” link be more descriptive. It is listing and retrieval as well as new, and it is docs as well as pages. It is now the only way to get to the list of documents. So why not call it “pages/documents”?
I want to get to my documents. You would think that the quick navigation from the side box for Folders would give you ALL the contents of the Folders — and you would be wrong! You get ONLY pages that were associated with folders, NOT the files that were also associated. Can’t you give me a quick way to files? I want to reserve the pages for a discussion of and inputs to book chapters, but the book chapters are stored as files. Most of the time, I want to upload and download those files. I don’t know how to solve this, but at least one idea is to return ALL contents of a folder, and then give the option of returning either files, or pages, and switching between types.
Sorry! Now I see the toggle at the bottom of the Folders box. I can get to my files.
But the screen waste comment stands. Plus the lack of a descriptive link, better than New Page.
I just have one complaint about pressing the enter button. When I try to list things it double spaces instead of just going to the next line. I hope you can give me some information on how to use the enter key the way I want.
Thanks
Based on my own “wish list” and the comment from others on this blog:
Add an option to turn off both sets of tabs at top to reclaim webpage real-estate or at the very least implement the drop-down box recommended above
Links for Pages & Files, Settings were always easy to find. We don’t need to have tabs for them
It would be more functional if individual workspaces could open in separate tabs for sharing between workspaces.
The tab that says “Wiki” should be renamed FrontPage (your term) or Home Page (the rest of the world).
The name of the actual wiki in larger/bolder type so it is a focal point.
You need to have a better system of notification for major changes.
I don’t remember seeing a warning at the top of any of my wikis, which is probably one of the more effective methods that pbworks uses.
Wish List
• Subfolders
• Breadcrumbs at top of
• Discussion tab
• Improved table functions – sizing is a big problem
• Ability to copy pages between workspaces
• Easier way to find pages and files to insert (sortable by name)
• Collaborative community wiki for pbworks ideas
Come on already, changing functionality and apprearence aside – DON’T MAKE ME DEAL WITH YOUR ADS! I was ASTONISHED when I went on my site and there was a huge banner for PBWorks Upgrades, in fact it is on all 4 of my sites. My users don’t need to see this!! If this remains I’m outta here
Hi Pam,
That message was a notification that we’re offering free training for educators. We do not have ads on free, or paid workspaces.
-Kristine
Hi Shayne,
The best place to send your feature requests is to the PBworks Support team. To contact them, click the help link in the top right if your workspace (on the new navigation bar)
-Kristine
I second all of Shayne’s suggestions. It used to be clear where to communicate design suggestions; now I can only find “I have a problem to report” invitations.
Also earlier this evening I was excited to find a little icon to click that made my page fill the screen and put all the top of the screen bars out of sight. Later when I went to look again it was gone and in its place the old little triangle that only expands the page sideways to hide the sidebars. Will the full-screen-view button come back?
Thanks.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your comments. The full screen view is available in edit mode and the ‘triangle’ to enlarge your page content is available in view mode. You can always read more about all of our features in the PBworks user manual (http://usermanual.pbworks.com/)
-Kristine
j’aimerais recevoir des messages en francais ou portugues pour me faciliter la lecture et echange des idees. car de fois on a beau a dire et ecrire mais de fois l’ interpretations en anglais courante fait defaut
Merci et bonne comprehension
Antoni Miluma
ADAS-ONG
Luanda-Angola
Too much clutter. I don’t mind the added controls, IF you have a setting option to not show them.
Jeff
I agree with Jeff. Clutter is a “no, no.” I even find Facebook too cluttered. Simple, transparent, fast loading: that’s the trick.
Like the Workspaces tab.
Would LOVE to see breadcrumbs across the top of each page.
Doji Kuwahara
“I just have one complaint about pressing the enter button. When I try to list things it double spaces instead of just going to the next line. I hope you can give me some information on how to use the enter key the way I want.”
If you hold the shift key when you press enter, it should only single space for you. Good luck!
These new changes have really improved the functionality of my wiki. I am very pleased that you are improving the charts. However, there’s still the request I always have: please allow students to have a profile where they can add their picture or an avatar. This addition to the student option will make the wiki a lot more fun for them and make the comments easier to follow. Thanks
The new design is really unnecessarily messy and clutters a previously elegant interface.
Whoever thought that nesting tabs was “cool”, needs to spend time seriously studying interface design.
Before auxiliary features were grouped together on the right side, now they are in several places. If PBworks web designers and programmers want to think “smart” then please do things properly – allow users to customise ALL items on a layout (including those imposed by the system) and include a “hide” option for all features.
Now that would be worth promoting and would actually consider the needs of customers who probably chose PBworks because it offered a clutter-free, easy to use wiki which clients could fashion to their own liking.
Lastly, I consider it very poor customer practice to impose these changes on existing loyal customers. Where was the “beta test site” to try out? Where is the option to stay with the “classic” version? No instead we just have to lump it. MMM how long do I have left on my subscription, it could be time to find another wiki!
Please think carefully.
I would like to be able to ‘white out’ content on the page like I used to. Now when I highlight out text and files that I don’t want my students to see until I have presented the material all the underlined links and symbols remain visible.
This means I have to remove all the links and reattach them as I teach them. Please give me my ‘white-out’ back.
“Private spaces now made public.” I’ve seen several comments about this, but don’t understand how this can be. I own two private spaces, and they’ve not been made public by the redesign.
Too much visual noise in the educational edition.
That’s pretty much my feeling about it, although I do like the functionality. The wiki’s appearance now feels very cluttered, although there may actually be minimal content present.