Re: [xwiki-devs] Status about Hidden pages + Future direction

IMO, the App bar is not very reliable nor scalable solution. Sure, it looks nice in the vanilla distribution because we have a handful of apps, but once the admin starts installing more, it does not scale. To fix that, the admin would edit the list of displayed apps and limit it to a smaller set, but then the additionally installed apps will no longer be discoverable by the users if we plan to stop showing them in the documentsTree as well. What would be nice would be to have a "more applications" button in the app bar for regular users as well, that would lead them to a page with a livetable of installed apps that they can use (which are not necessarily listed in the app bar nor in the documentsTree macro).

+1 for the distinction between content apps vs no-content apps when deciding to hide or not the entry page of the application. Sounds like a good rule. Personally, I don`t really agree to go further with the separation of apps and content for the simple reason that some apps really generate content (reports, events, tasks, etc.) which are wiki pages/documents and on which users want to interract/collaborate. I believe that hiding these app generated content pages from the general navigation / documentTree would only hinder the collaboration. Thanks, Eduard On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 1:18 PM, vincent(a)massol.net wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I wasn’t sure about current rule for hiding pages so I researched it and > I’m listing below what I believe is our current status. I’d like to > document it on dev.xwiki.org if we’re ok with this status. > > Current rules: > ============== > > * Technical documents must be hidden > * Technical apps must be hidden and not appear in the Document Tree. These > are apps that don’t generate content data. For example the following apps > (not exhaustive list) have their pages hidden (including WebHome): > ** Stats app > ** Active Installs app > ** AWM app > ** Color Themes app (it generates data but not content data) > ** Dashboard app > ** Scheduler app > * Apps that generate content pages (ie pages that should be appear in > global search results) must have their WebHome page not hidden (and the > generated content pages must also not be hidden). As a consequence these > apps will appear in the Document Tree. > > Future: > ======= > > It would also be nice to discuss if in the future we wish to separate more > Apps from Content and hide all Application pages (including Webhome), so > that it is less confusing for users who would: > * Use the App bar to navigate to applications > * Use the Document Tree to navigate to content pages > > I personally would like this I think but the current problem is that > generated content pages won’t be found in global search results. Each app > can provide a specialized search ofc but it’s not good enough. Thus we’d > need to find a way for the entries to appear in the global search results > even though they are hidden. One solution would be to have a way to mark a > space as an application space and exclude those from the DocumentTree (for > example). > > Before we dive into the solutions in details, would you agree that it > would be good to better separate Apps from Content? > > Some Links: > =========== > > * Currently documented best practices about hiding technical documents: > http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/ApplicationDevelopmentBestPra… > * Mail thread: > http://xwiki.475771.n2.nabble.com/Brainstorming-Rules-for-hidden-documents-… > * JIRA issue: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/MOCCACAL-85 > > Thanks > -Vincent