16 Oct
2016
16 Oct
'16
2:12 a.m.
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
I’d say this is optional. It would a pain to always mandate this. For
example the LDAP Application only provides an Admin UI (it only helps to
configure LDAP).
So for me the entry point is another concept: it’s a link to a place where
the user should go to use the app. It can be pointing either to the app’s
home page if there’s one, or the app’s Admin UI page.
The goal of this thread is not to talk about home pages or Admin sections
of extensions. It’s about discoverability and making it easy for users to
start using any extension that is installed through the EM UI.
AFAIU, we both agree on this :)
What I wanted to point out was that an application/extension could also
provide its "settings", just like you have for Firefox addons, for example.
You should go to a list of installed extensions/apps (TBD) and see both a
way to access that extension/app, but also the way to configure it. IMO, we
should not reuse the entry point for configuration stuff (when there is no
UI, like the LDAP example). However, other apps/extensions could have both.
IMO, it would be make more sense to talk about extensions here (i.e. at an
EM level), and not particularly about applications (i.e. along the lines of
Vincent's original suggestion). AFAIR, we now have extension categories.
Why bother with app panel UIXs or Application Descriptors, when EM already
provides all we need? We have the list of pages from EM and a way to
identify extensions that are of type "application". We now add the entry
point and the settings and we`re all good to go. It is up to the extension
to juggle the category, entry point and/or settings, if any of this applies
to it.
Also, this would fit both EM's UI for an extension's details view, but also
the Application Index's listing of installed applications (which would just
be a listing only extensions of category "application", and maybe AWM apps
which are not extensions yet).
No need to complicate things.
-Eduard
On 15 Oct 2016, at 13:30, Eduard Moraru
<enygma2002(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:18 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
>
>> On 14 Oct 2016, at 19:03, Thomas Mortagne <thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> This does not make any sense at general Extension level.
>>
>> Could be custom metadata that apply to XAR extensions. Since that only
>> make sense for XAR extensions I would prefer to have this be
>> implemented as a xobject as usual.
>
> Yes, it could be implemented as a UIXP/XObject of the Extension UI.
>
>> For me this is already the job of the uix we use for application panel
>> so I don't really see the point of adding something else.
>
> It’s not enough at all. That was my main point and explanation.
Apparently
I failed
to explain the problem correctly.
I’ll give more details:
* You install a XAR extension that provides a ConfigurableClass (but you
don’t know that as a user)
I would say that an application would need both and Entry Point (i.e.
homepage)
Thanks
-Vincent
but also an optional Configuration section (i.e.
administration
section defined by either a ConfigurableClass entry or even something
custom).
Thanks,
Eduard
> * After you’ve installed that extension, as a user, you don’t know what
to
> do. You need to go read the doc for the app
to understand where you
need to
> go to start using it.
>
> So I’m really convinced we need something better than what we have now.
>
> Now after we move the Applications UIXP to the
xwiki-platform-applications
> module, we could add an “entrypoint’ property
in the UIXP but that would
> mean that the Extension Manager UI module would depend on
> xwiki-platform-applications. We would need to decide if it’s ok. I
think it
> is since it can be considered as an
application descriptor and I don’t
see
> a problem of having the EM UI module know
about application descriptors.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks
> Vincent
>
>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
> wrote:
>>> Hi devs,
>>>
>>> Problem
>>> =======
>>>
>>> We have 2 issues right now when installing an extension in XWiki:
>>>
>>> 1) It’s not clear where is the entry point of that extension.
>>> - Example1: an app that is only for admins and only has a
> ConfigurableClass
>>> - Example2: an app that provides a macro and doesn’t have a UI
>>>
>>> 2) Even when an extension registers itself in the Applications Panel,
> the user still need to refresh the page or navigate away to see it.
>>>
>>> Proposal
>>> ========
>>>
>>> * Introduce the concept of Entry point (a.k.a home page) in Extension
> metadata
>>> * Have the EM UI display the extension’s entry point (when there’s
one)
> after having installed the extension so that
the user can click on it
and
> be taken to the home page of the extension.
>>>
>>> This would make extensions more discoverable IMO.
>>>
>>> Implementation Details
>>> ==================
>>>
>>> * Some maven extension metadata properties in pom.xml
>>>
>>> * A format to represent an entry point. It shouldn’t be a full URL
> since that needs to be computed at runtime. Basically it should contain:
>>> ** The document reference
>>> ** The action to use (view, admin, etc) - optional, should default to
> “view"
>>> ** The query string to use - optional, should default to an empty
query
> string
>>>
>>> This corresponds to the notion of ResourceReference
> (EntityResourceReference to be precise). However we don’t have any
textual
> representation of it ATM.
>>>
>>> WDYT? Good idea? Bad idea?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> -Vincent
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