Hi, On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <[email protected]> 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/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/