4 Jan
2010
4 Jan
'10
4:37 p.m.
Hi,
On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
There are many things that could be improved in the XWiki
Administration, but for the moment I would like to discuss the
Presentation part, which is one of those most likely to be accessed by
newbies, and should be easy to deal with.
Currently, the Presentation allows to configure the following topics:
- Header: title bar text and meta information
- Panels: whether to show panels on the right/left, and the list of
panels to display in each column
- Footer: copyright notice and version
- Skin: Skin document, Color theme, Default stylesheet, other stylesheets
Problems:
- IMO, some fields are not really presentation related: title, meta
information, copyright notice, version info
- It is not easy to list the panels you want without any help or suggestion
- The panel columns and panel list configuration feature is also
available in a friendlier form in the Panel Wizard section of the
administration, but there is no reference to it from the Presentation
section
- There is no suggestion about available skins, and the user is not
"warned" that customizing the skin actually means changing templates and
css
- "Default stylesheet" and "Other stylesheets" mean nothing to
someone
who didn't look in the skin directory; also, as I see it, they are only
useful for the Toucan skin (where there were several pre-defined
stylesheets for different colors), while in the Colibri skin -- and
probably the other skins that will be developed from now on -- we use
Color themes for changing the look.
Proposed changes:
- Move Header and Footer topics to the General section
Agreed - however simplifying the "Presentation" section while cluttering the
"General" one maybe isn't our best option.
- Keep 4 topics: Page layout, Panels, Color theme,
Advanced skin
configuration, displayed in a horizontal tab bar (like the one in AllDocs)
[Page layout]
- Use something similar to the Page Layout tab form the wizard to
choose if the right/left panels are shown
[Panels]
- Continue to allow listing the panels in input fields, since for
some users it is faster and easier than playing with the panel wizard,
but attach an AJAX suggest to those input fields
- Display the Panel wizard (and remove the panel wizard section form
Administration); Note: the panel wizard will need some adjustments for
this to be possible.
We should keep in mind the proposals related to gadgets and panels as
containers when doing this.
[Color themes]
- Integrate the ColorTheme "application" (or soon to be application):
allow browsing, previewing and selecting available color themes, and
creating a new color theme
[Advanced skin configuration]
- Inform the user that he would need to write his own templates and
stylesheets, either in the provided textareas or in files attached to
the corresponding skin object
- Allow to browse, preview and select skins
This sounds good in principle as long as we find the right way to display
all this without overloading the UI (and the browser).
There are many changes, and they will require much more than a couple of
days (there won't be time for them to show up in
2.2, for example), but
if we agree, they can be progressively integrated in future versions.
Sounds good overall. I agree that we need to improve the Administration UI
and starting with the Presentation section sounds good (and Jérôme will
improve the Import section soon, won't he? ;-)
Guillaume
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
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--
Guillaume Lerouge
Product Manager - XWiki SAS
Skype: wikibc
Twitter: glerouge
http://guillaumelerouge.com/