Re: [xwiki-devs] [UX] Page templates availability

Hello all, On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <valicac(a)gmail.com I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture. Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below. As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do. I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc. Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these. I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary. Thanks, Anca