15 ms·

Jolie: A drop-in replacement of Django Admin

156 points by sambalbadjak 5y ago

yen7 5y ago
Django Admin is popular and easy to setup, if you need an admin to do the basic CRUD operations, authenticating users, managing forms and content it will do the job. If you need something more complex and scalable, even Django says it's not the best fit. Better try a third-party that is well-integrated with Django like Forest Admin.
sambalbadjak 5y ago
Credentials to view the preview: username: preview password: preview
- stavros 5y ago
  Thank you, what were they thinking, not mentioning those anywhere?
  - airstrike 5y ago
    It's called Hacker News, after all /s
Zizizizz 5y ago
This looks great! I thought the admin design was great
aniforprez 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Also hyperlinks are the same blue hue in light and dark mode, resulting in significantly lower contrast for the latter
  - michielpeakfijn 5y ago
    You're right. That was stupid. We fixed it. How's this?
    - airstrike 5y ago
      Love that you incorporated the feedback. I'm afraid it's still a miss, though. As far as I can tell, white is now used for both text and hyperlinks? Hyperlinks should generally be blue because that's what everyone has been trained to spot for the last ~30 years. It just needed to be a different shade of blue And I'd make the text slightly less white than 255,255,255 because that can be too much contrast.
aliswe 5y ago
Very nice!! Well done
matsemann 5y ago
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.
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  My approach was at first nothing but admin, but then i found places where i must make custom views. I'm kind of at a spot where I want to replace all admin with custom but this comes up against an important rule. Dont fix what's not broken.
- johnzim 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - freedom_dev 5y ago
      I'm curious: what would your other top 4 most valuable skills be? I'm asking because I was genuinely unaware of django admin despite being a developer for several years and I wonder how many more "open secrets" I'm oblivious to
      - 5y ago
tootie 5y ago
Wagtail is a full CMS that is basically just a tarted up Django admin
- wilsonfiifi 5y ago
  Oh it’s much more than that. Wagtail’s killer feature is the StreamField [0] [0] https://docs.wagtail.org/en/v2.8.1/topics/streamfield.html https://docs.wagtail.org/en/v2.8.1/topics/streamfield.html
  - tootie 5y ago
    Sure we use that extensively and it's great but I also haven't seen a CMS that didn't have an equivalent feature in years.
airstrike 5y ago
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/ https://grappelliproject.com/
- vgel 5y ago
  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.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Yup, been there too. Like others have mentioned, I've learned that spending time to build custom functionality with proper CBVs often ends up being a more sustainable approach in the long run
  - ngngngng 5y ago
    I've only been writing Django professionally for the past month and I've already bumped into some situations where [3rd party tool] was a terrible idea because it had compatibility issues or the project was no longer maintained. I'm already determined to just stick to core Django functionality and write everything else I need as minimally as possible myself.
    - airstrike 5y ago
      This is the way. There are a handful of libraries written by core Django developers that can be beneficial given their intimate knowledge of the framework and how those packages tend to fit neatly (often before being outright integrated into the core)
eclipticplane 5y ago
There was also Django Jet - https://github.com/geex-arts/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.
tkainrad 5y ago
You may not like it but the regular Django admin is what peak UI design looks like.
- stavros 5y ago
  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.
- thinkxl 5y ago
  it does one job and does it well
  - vdfs 5y ago
    In this case, It's also free and open source
- dfgsdfhsde 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dsnr 5y ago
  Exactly, not everything needs to have rounded corners with 20px of padding. I also like the default design.
selectnull 5y ago
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.
pmontra 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  [deleted]
- y4mi 5y ago
  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
- klysm 5y ago
  More examples of why it’s incredibly important to always empathize with your user and their _needs_.
- manigandham 5y ago
rcarmo 5y ago
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.
rossdavidh 5y ago
Minor point: misspelling of "extensible" as "extentible".
- michielpeakfijn 5y ago
  Fixed. Cheers :)
Biganon 5y ago
I might be dumb, but I can't seem to find the credentials for the preview panel... am I missing something?
- kvothe_ 5y ago
  the creds are preview and preview. so this in another post
raylus 5y ago
Wagtail CMS https://wagtail.org/ https://wagtail.org/ is the answer to this, and doesn't technically 'replace' the existing Django dashboard, new admin interface is being sponsored by Google, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6reQ7T8fQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6reQ7T8fQ
kvothe_ 5y ago
This is pretty good. However, there was another one that's been around a bit longer that's also really nice. See here: https://github.com/farridav/django-jazzmin https://github.com/farridav/django-jazzmin
Justsignedup 5y ago
A missed opportunity. Djolie.
- warvariuc 5y ago
  He talks about you in his sleep And there's nothing I can do to keep From crying when he calls your name Jolene
earthboundkid 5y ago
This is not anything. “Soon: Fully extentible”?
- michielpeakfijn 5y ago
  Woops. We changed it to extensible. Thanks.
  - earthboundkid 5y ago
    Thanks.
mickael-kerjean 5y ago
Django admin is quite an awesome tool but very stack specific. If you don't use Django, I have open source [1] a tool that takes another approach which is to query the DB schema directly so people can fill up form and follow along the different foreign keys of the db. An example of this approach can be seen there: https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=mysql&host=88.99.185.55&username=anonymous&password=anonymous&next=/files/classicmodels/ https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=mysql&host=88.99.185.5... which is using a sample DB [2] [1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash [2] https://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-sample-database.aspx https://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-sample-database.aspx
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  This is a good project. Thank you.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
The draggable image comparison's slider works on Chrome, but tries to drag the text as a selection on Firefox. Another effect of the Chrome monoculture.
jmconfuzeus 5y ago
Using Bootstrap is a great idea because trying to work with the CSS that comes with the default admin when you're adding custom views is sucky. But I don't think most people will use this instead of the default because the admin is only used by the internal development team anyway. Django makes it so easy to add CRUD to models that using the admin doesn't make much sense in most cases.

156 points by sambalbadjak 5y ago

yen7 5y ago

Django Admin is popular and easy to setup, if you need an admin to do the basic CRUD operations, authenticating users, managing forms and content it will do the job. If you need something more complex and scalable, even Django says it's not the best fit. Better try a third-party that is well-integrated with Django like Forest Admin.

sambalbadjak 5y ago

Credentials to view the preview: username: preview password: preview

stavros 5y ago
Thank you, what were they thinking, not mentioning those anywhere?
- airstrike 5y ago
  It's called Hacker News, after all /s

Zizizizz 5y ago

This looks great! I thought the admin design was great

aniforprez 5y ago

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 5y ago
Also hyperlinks are the same blue hue in light and dark mode, resulting in significantly lower contrast for the latter
- michielpeakfijn 5y ago
  You're right. That was stupid. We fixed it. How's this?
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Love that you incorporated the feedback. I'm afraid it's still a miss, though. As far as I can tell, white is now used for both text and hyperlinks? Hyperlinks should generally be blue because that's what everyone has been trained to spot for the last ~30 years. It just needed to be a different shade of blue And I'd make the text slightly less white than 255,255,255 because that can be too much contrast.

aliswe 5y ago

Very nice!! Well done

matsemann 5y ago

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.

sleepingadmin 5y ago
My approach was at first nothing but admin, but then i found places where i must make custom views. I'm kind of at a spot where I want to replace all admin with custom but this comes up against an important rule. Dont fix what's not broken.
johnzim 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - freedom_dev 5y ago
    I'm curious: what would your other top 4 most valuable skills be? I'm asking because I was genuinely unaware of django admin despite being a developer for several years and I wonder how many more "open secrets" I'm oblivious to
    - 5y ago

tootie 5y ago

Wagtail is a full CMS that is basically just a tarted up Django admin

wilsonfiifi 5y ago
Oh it’s much more than that. Wagtail’s killer feature is the StreamField [0] [0] https://docs.wagtail.org/en/v2.8.1/topics/streamfield.html https://docs.wagtail.org/en/v2.8.1/topics/streamfield.html
- tootie 5y ago
  Sure we use that extensively and it's great but I also haven't seen a CMS that didn't have an equivalent feature in years.

airstrike 5y ago

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/ https://grappelliproject.com/

vgel 5y ago
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.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Yup, been there too. Like others have mentioned, I've learned that spending time to build custom functionality with proper CBVs often ends up being a more sustainable approach in the long run
- ngngngng 5y ago
  I've only been writing Django professionally for the past month and I've already bumped into some situations where [3rd party tool] was a terrible idea because it had compatibility issues or the project was no longer maintained. I'm already determined to just stick to core Django functionality and write everything else I need as minimally as possible myself.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    This is the way. There are a handful of libraries written by core Django developers that can be beneficial given their intimate knowledge of the framework and how those packages tend to fit neatly (often before being outright integrated into the core)

eclipticplane 5y ago

There was also Django Jet - https://github.com/geex-arts/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.

tkainrad 5y ago

You may not like it but the regular Django admin is what peak UI design looks like.

stavros 5y ago
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.
thinkxl 5y ago
it does one job and does it well
- vdfs 5y ago
  In this case, It's also free and open source
dfgsdfhsde 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
[deleted]
dsnr 5y ago
Exactly, not everything needs to have rounded corners with 20px of padding. I also like the default design.

selectnull 5y ago

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.

pmontra 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
[deleted]
y4mi 5y ago
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
klysm 5y ago
More examples of why it’s incredibly important to always empathize with your user and their _needs_.
manigandham 5y ago

rcarmo 5y ago

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.

rossdavidh 5y ago

Minor point: misspelling of "extensible" as "extentible".

michielpeakfijn 5y ago
Fixed. Cheers :)

Biganon 5y ago

I might be dumb, but I can't seem to find the credentials for the preview panel... am I missing something?

kvothe_ 5y ago
the creds are preview and preview. so this in another post

raylus 5y ago

Wagtail CMS https://wagtail.org/ https://wagtail.org/ is the answer to this, and doesn't technically 'replace' the existing Django dashboard, new admin interface is being sponsored by Google, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6reQ7T8fQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6reQ7T8fQ

kvothe_ 5y ago

This is pretty good. However, there was another one that's been around a bit longer that's also really nice. See here: https://github.com/farridav/django-jazzmin https://github.com/farridav/django-jazzmin

Justsignedup 5y ago

A missed opportunity. Djolie.

warvariuc 5y ago
He talks about you in his sleep And there's nothing I can do to keep From crying when he calls your name Jolene

earthboundkid 5y ago

This is not anything. “Soon: Fully extentible”?

michielpeakfijn 5y ago
Woops. We changed it to extensible. Thanks.
- earthboundkid 5y ago
  Thanks.

mickael-kerjean 5y ago

Django admin is quite an awesome tool but very stack specific. If you don't use Django, I have open source [1] a tool that takes another approach which is to query the DB schema directly so people can fill up form and follow along the different foreign keys of the db. An example of this approach can be seen there: https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=mysql&host=88.99.185.55&username=anonymous&password=anonymous&next=/files/classicmodels/ https://demo.filestash.app/login?type=mysql&host=88.99.185.5... which is using a sample DB [2] [1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash [2] https://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-sample-database.aspx https://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-sample-database.aspx

kumarvvr 5y ago
This is a good project. Thank you.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

The draggable image comparison's slider works on Chrome, but tries to drag the text as a selection on Firefox. Another effect of the Chrome monoculture.

jmconfuzeus 5y ago

Using Bootstrap is a great idea because trying to work with the CSS that comes with the default admin when you're adding custom views is sucky. But I don't think most people will use this instead of the default because the admin is only used by the internal development team anyway. Django makes it so easy to add CRUD to models that using the admin doesn't make much sense in most cases.