Re: [xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] Rules for hidden documents + need solution for Home Page App for linking the Dashboard Home page...

Hi, On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 1:54 PM, vincent(a)massol.net <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: Eventually in a dedicated area just like we have for Users or Workspaces. Until now the 'standard' to hide pages was if we considered them to be 'technical' pages and that an user should not access them directly. It's true that we kind of went farther and hidden also advanced Applications, letting them be accessible only from the 'Applications' panel. In theory I agree to separate the Application's data from Wiki content, since it's separating a bit also the Flavors. But in practice this is kind of hard to do since we don't model Applications and we don't have a descriptor and everything is build on pages. As you know if you install older applications they will appear in the Spaces area and is confusing. Anyway, in practice just having a convention will not make the Homepage App and Spaces confusion-proof. Also wiki pages could be seen as instance of a Wiki App/Flavor. Selecting an app means it will show only the app's WebHome. What if I want to select Blog.FirstBlogPost as HomePage? or whatever instance from an application. How the UI will look in this case? The question is: what is more likely the users will select to populate their Homepage? - Is it an app (other than the Dashboard)? Would someone limit their wiki functionality just to use a Blog? Would they select Statistics, Panels, Scheduler, User Index? They could, but it will be a shame. - Is it a page? The option to select between an existing page or 'create your own' (a.k.a empty) are very similar, since after populating Main.WebHome with your content it will be like any other page. IMO the current proposal for the Homepage is a bit too complicated. First because it's holding so much text (I would never read it). What I think people are missing some layouts for the Dashboard applications, some predefined layouts. Choose between: - 2 columns with Spaces + AS; - 1 column with a Livetable that you customize and give a Class you want to list; - 1 column just with Text (equivalent of empty or 'Create your own content'). Currently in User Profile we have a select that asks if what we see on the Homepage is the global Dashboard or a custom one, and this mechanism could be improved. So, to answer your question: Instead of listing all the pages on the wikis and all the applications, I would just list the 3 known layouts user would need: empty, current, livetable. Instead of creating the Dashboard layouts like suggested above, we could implement this using the templates mechanism (but the livetable needs to be put in a Macro, so the user could edit it with WYSIWYG and just change the Class parameter). When creating a space you are asked to select a template. For the Main.WebHome use case when in edit we could allow the user to change the initial selection (we will not store content in Main.WebHome, but just includes). An older mockup of the space template selector http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/attachment/22498/space1.png Until we would implement additional mechanisms, from your 2 options and with what you currently implemented: I would select 1) Just change the hidden from Dashboard. Option 2) would work if we were to have a better separation between pages and apps. Thanks, Caty