Today I had a new idea for how the Moderator Panel could be redesigned. Previously I suggested just bringing all the options together onto one page, to save clicking and hitting "Back" so much when you want to check join requests, edit subforums, etc. This idea would save even more clicking by bringing the Moderator Panel right on to the forum page.
The panel could be displayed above subforums, in the style of the Forum Pulse feature in the main forums. In this mockup I was able to keep vertical height to 225px, which is over 100px shorter than Pulse.
To save space, tools are grouped together under clickable headings (on the left) again, except this time page refreshes aren't necessary to move between them.
A subforum is highlighted (in blue) when it is selected, and options appear to the right. (Yes, I stole the eye from Fireworks).
Of course, subforums can be rearranged by drag and drop. smile
"Tool tips" are a minor idea - I put an option for disabling them under "Help & Resources" (below).
As with Forum Pulse, the window can be minimised or closed with the buttons in the top-right corner - which is more convenient than storing the panel on a separate page.
I took some liberties with the options that might be available. whee
The links do not navigate to a different page - instead, windows 'pop up.' (Except the bold links to other forums in the "Help & Resources" tab.)
For example, Join Requests might look like this:
...And if the panel looks like this on the page...
...then Join Requests would look like this:
The panel looks a bit out of place in the mockup because it mixes the old-style forums with the new style, but that's the idea in a large nutshell. smile
In this way it would be possible to perform nearly all admin/mod tasks without refreshing the page!
It would require some clever AJAX coding, though, and consideration would need to be given to the effect on page loading times. However, I would imagine the burden - for most features, anyway - would be less than Forum Pulse.
