22 Aug
2009
22 Aug
'09
1:34 p.m.
Hi Vincent & Alexandru,
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
Hi,
On Aug 21, 2009, at 8:26 PM, Alexandru Cismaru wrote:
Yes. As Vincent stated it, as long as we have enough people to maintain both
they can definitely coexist. To me, XEclipse is more geared towards
developers while XWikiFox is interesting for wiki gardeners.
Wiki gardeners want to get notifications when a page is modified on one of
the wikis they follow, quickly see what changed and rollback it if needed.
Obviously, these features are still lacking from XWikiFox but it provides a
good backend & UI for them. I think a FF extension is better than another
piece of software for wiki gardeners since they're web power users (thus
likely to have FF already) but not developers. They're accustomed to XWiki's
web interface and when they click on a page they want to see it in their
usual browser, not as a syntax representation in XEclipse (I know XEclipse
allows you to see the rendered page but it's not really useful on small
screens / non-dual-screens setups).
Wiki gardeners don't necessarily need another piece of software running. For
instance, we tell our corporate users who are going to be XWiki
administrators to install Firefox since it provides a better user experience
than IE, notably for the panel wizard. Having them install and use FF on a
regular basis instead of their usual IE browser is already a big step
forward. It would be hard to have them install one more piece of software
(XEclipse) to do wiki monitoring. That's where I think XWikiFox has a role
to play.
Hi.
@Jerome:
I thought that the user doesn't need to manage more than 5 wikis,
it can
be changed :).
@Vincent:
Yes, with notifications it will become truly useful... For now you
can
only see the content of the wikis and access some pages really easy.
It is a
tool that is supposed to buy you time and make it easier for you to
manage
wikis. There are still many things to improve, but I think it can
actually
become a nice tool that you use with pleasure and still makes you more
productive.
There are many similitudes between XWikiFox and XEclipse, but I
think it's
a good idea to let the users access wiki data in as many ways as
possible.
So... they can both exist, right?
Actually the initial goal of XEclipse is to be a
productivity tool so
exactly what you describe for XWikiFox :)
I think there is at least 2 big differences between both tools:
- XEclipse targets developers / people willing to learn and use wiki
syntax
- XWikiFox is tighly integrated with the browser and XWiki's web
interface
In the long run we need to wonder what XWiki's development platform will
look like. Based on current trends, 2 options are possible:
1. the XWiki Development toolkit is a powerful Eclipse extension, also
available standalone
2. the XWiki Development toolkit is fully integrated to the web version
of the product using Bespin and its collaboration features
If 2) comes true, XWikiFox might become a way for the development toolkit to
do the things that can't be done online (notifications, manage multiple
wikis, persistent state storage)
My vision is to make XEclipse also receive events and
be available in
the system tray and thus show notification popups when changes happen.
Re whether both can exist or not, it's only going to be a matter of
how many contributors/committers maintain them. If you're volunteering
for maintaining XWikiFox on the long run then indeed it can exist for
as long as you maintain it :)
That said, it's a good question since we can ask ourselves whether
joining forces wouldn't be better. Right now for example we don't have
many people working on XEclipse unfortunately even though it's really
promising.
I'm don't think both pieces of software are addressing the same use case
right now. However, we might considering joining forces the day we decide
that the XWiki development toolkit goes fully browser-based (it will happen
at one point anyway, it's only a matter of time).
Another aspect is that XEclipse is written in java so it makes a bit
easier to maintain and extend it (for example it's
easy to integrate
Thomas's remote events in it whereas it's more complex with XWikiFox
since it's written in JS and listening to a jgroup channel in JS might
not be as easy as in Java).
Last aspect: not everyone is using FF and it's a pity that those who
don't cannot access the XWikiFox features. They can use XEclipse
though since it works everywhere.
I'm wondering what you mean here... Last time I checked Firefox was a
cross-platform application too, thus XWikiFox "works everywhere" too if
you're referring to the underlying OS platform.
Not everyone is using Eclipse as their primary development tool either and
you could consider Eclipse as a platform in the sense Firefox is one.
Though you're right, the actual equivalent of XEclipse would be XWikiFox
mounted on a standalone Prism version of Firefox and we don't have that yet
(even is Sergiu would like it ;-)
IMO we need to think about a direction for XWikiFox that wouldn't be
the one that XEclipse is following.
Let's see what others think.
I've described what I thought about the matter above :-)
To summarize:
1. Short term
1. XWikiFox for wiki gardeners
2. XEclipse for developers
2. Long term
1. All XWiki development done through the web interface
2. XWikiFox as an extension / notification tool
To finish, as I told you on IM, I really like the UI
you've done and I
think you've done a good job with XWikiFox. I blame myself for not
having spendtenough time to think about it at the beginning of the SOC
project and playing the joykiller. So don't be deterred by what I said
and keep working on it to polish it. It's very promising :)
I'm using FF 3.5 and the UI looks weird (items in the list on the left are
not aligned, see
http://gsoc.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/XWiki+Widget+and+Firefox+extensi…
),
not sure what might cause this.
I should also have been spending more time working with you on the project
but the summer went too fast... Sorry about that. And well, you could have
spent more time asking questions and interacting on the lists too ;-)
Keep up the good work!
Guillaume
Thanks for your work
-Vincent
--
Guillaume Lerouge
Product Manager - XWiki
Skype: wikibc
Twitter: glerouge
http://guillaumelerouge.com/
I think it's a good idea to merge the
functionalities of these two
extensions (XWikiFox and FoxWiki), and it surely can be done.
When you get an error like "Sorry we couldn't retrieve any data",
it means
that the ajax call failed (maybe the wiki is dead for the moment, or
the url
is wrong). The extension is not that user friendly for the moment,
but it's
an important aspect and the future improvements should focus on this.
Thank you Jerome and Vincent for your prompt feedback.
Alex
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