3 May
2018
3 May
'18
3:21 p.m.
On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 3:01 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
Hi Marius,
See below
> I’m seeing this a bit as a “hack" since the separation would exist in
the
In the end it boils down to how you view the Navigation panel I think.
I view it as something that can be controlled by the user to decide what
to see/not see.
Deciding to see or not the apps is a choice.
and a
you
On 3 May 2018, at 13:24, Marius Dumitru Florea
<
mariusdumitru.florea(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 1:44 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
>
>
>> On 3 May 2018, at 12:32, Marius Dumitru Florea <
> mariusdumitru.florea(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <
>> valicac(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 7:02 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea <
>>> mariusdumitru.florea(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi devs,
>>>>
>>>> Some users have complained that the navigation panel shows top level
>>> pages
>>>> that they don't need/want to navigate to, most importantly the XWiki
>>> page.
>>>>
>>>> There are multiple ways in which we can fix this.
>>>>
>>>> Solution 1: Content Page
>>>>
>>>> Create a top level "Content" page for user content and
configure the
>>>> navigation panel to show the contents of this page.
>>>>
>>>> Pros:
>>>> * Namespace isolation (no conflicts between user pages and
application
>>>> pages)
>>>>
>>>> Cons:
>>>> * The user may want to navigate to a top level application page
> (although
>>>> it's better to use the application panel for this instead)
>>>> * All the paths / references used to access the user content will
start
>>>> with this "Content"
page
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>> S1: This solution is good if users would work in isolation or in the
>>> evaluation period, but for team and multiple people sharing spaces, I
> don't
>>> see this as a valid solution.
>>>
>>
>> The Content space is for all users, shared. This is not about having a
>> separate space for each user.
>>
>>
>>> -0
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Solution 2: Blacklisting
>>>>
>>>> Add support for specifying a list of (top level) pages to exclude
from
>>> the
>>>> navigation panel.
>>>>
>>>> Pros:
>>>> * The user (top level) pages created later on will be visible in the
>>>> navigation panel
>>>> * The blacklist could be used to filter not only top level pages but
> also
>>>> any nested page from the navigation panel.
>>>>
>>>> Cons:
>>>> * The blacklist depends on the installed apps. The administrator may
> have
>>>> to update the blacklist when new applications are installed
>>>> * The blacklist depends on whether you view hidden pages or not. If
you
>>>> don't view hidden pages then
the blacklist probably contains 4 pages:
>>> Help,
>>>> Menu, Sandbox, XWiki (there is an application panel entry for each of
>>> them
>>>> except XWiki), which is manageable. If you view hidden pages then you
>>> need
>>>> to black list 28+ pages which is hard to manage and maintain.
>>>> * The filtering needs to happen on the database (otherwise we break
the
>>>> pagination) so the database
queries will become a bit more complex,
> which
>>>> could led to some performance penalty, depending on how long the
>>> blacklist
>>>> is.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> S2: I see the blacklist solution more as a hack for things in XWiki
that
>>> should be fixed (have users outside
XWiki space, move Sandbox into
Help
>>> space, hide Help pages and provide a
dedicated Help entry in the User
> menu,
>>> etc.) but we don't have the time to do it.
>>> -0 in an ideal state
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Solution 3: Whitelisting
>>>>
>>>> Add support for controlling the list of top level pages that are
>>> displayed
>>>> in the navigation panel.
>>>>
>>>> Pros:
>>>> * the whitelist doesn't depend on the installed extensions or hidden
>>> pages
>>>> so it's easier to maintain.
>>>> * the whitelist can be used to order the top level pages visible in
the
>>>> navigation panel.
>>>> * the whitelist can be used to show at the top level (for navigation
>>>> purpose) a page that is not really a top level page
>>>> * No performance penalty
>>>>
>>>> Cons:
>>>> * The user (top level) pages created later on will not be visible in
> the
>>>> navigation panel. The administrator will have to add them to the
>>> whitelist
>>>> if they are useful for the navigation. Although creating top level
> pages
>>>> should happen less often than creating nested pages under the
existing
>>> top
>>>> level pages.
>>>> * the whitelist controls only the first level in the tree. The next
>>> levels
>>>> will be dynamic (database queries) and with the default order.
>>>>
>>>
>>> S3: I prefer this solution, but with the ability to also display some
>>> dynamic pattern, something like: display X, Y and all children of Z,
or
>>> all pages starting with A, or all
pages created by group N :) (they
are
>>> just ideas, I know some are very hard
to implement).
>>> +1
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Solution 4: Exclude extension pages
>>>>
>>>> Exclude from the navigation panel the top level pages that belong to
an
>>>> installed extension, allowing the
administrator to make some
exceptions
>>>> (e.g. keep the home page). The
rationale is that if an installed
>>> extension
>>>> has a top level page then that page is most probably the application
> home
>>>> page which should be accessible from the application panel. This can
be
>>>> implemented on top of solution 3
(the whitelist is basically dynamic:
> we
>>>> collect the top level pages that don't belong to an extension).
>>>>
>>>> Pros:
>>>> * It does a clear separation between applications (accessible from
the
>>>> application panel) and content
(accessible from the navigation
panel).
>>> The
>>>> navigation panel is currently mixing application pages and (user)
> content
>>>> pages.
>>>> * The administrator doesn't need to update the navigation panel
>>>> configuration to exclude a top level application home page each time
an
>>>> application is installed
>>>> * The hidden top level extension code pages are not shown even when
> "show
>>>> hidden pages" is set to true
>>>> * The user top level pages created later on appear in the tree
>>>> automatically
>>>>
>>>> Cons:
>>>> * The user won't be able to navigate easily to an application home
> page:
>>>> ** if the application panel is not shown
>>>> ** or if the application doesn't provide an application panel entry
>>>> ** or if the administrator has removed the entry from the application
>>> panel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>> S4: I don't know if for our users this separation between apps and
> content
>>> is very clear.
>>
>>
>> I think our users (or their administrators at least) want to separate
the
>> applications from the content. So I think
it would be good to have
>> something dedicated to applications, the application panel, and
something
dedicated to content, the navigation panel.
> Nav panel but not elsewhere (AllDocs, other
trees such as the
Rename/Copy
ones,
etc).
I don't get it. The blacklist / whitelist would be applied *only* to the
navigation panel also so what you propose is not consistent either.
> I think if we want that separation we need to think about it more
> globally. AFAIR we had some discussions about this separation already
and
> the proposed solution were different than the
one proposed here. So if
you
> want to go in this direction, we need to
review the previous proposals
and
think
more globally which IMO is going to take a lot of time.
> I’m still thinking that we should allow users to define a white list black
list and that’s all. That will cover all use cases that a generic
platform requires.
Did you read the cons? Having to manually update the blacklist whenever install an application is a pain.
Only if you don’t want to see the app you added in the nav panel :)
BTW I said that I find it ok to have this “app filter” but as one of the
white list filters that can be applied. So I’m not against it if it’s
configurable.
And what about the hidden pages?
You mean the blacklisted pages?
Don't
you find it hard to manage a blacklist of 28+ excludes?
Sure. And again I said I’m fine with with having this whitelist filter ;)
Solution 4 doesn't
require maintenance from an administrator. When you install an app it's
top
level pages are excluded automatically.
BTW I’m not sure that’s enough. For example several
apps have subspaces
such as a Data space and a Code space. This means that the Data space would
be displayed and thus the app will be displayed in the nav panel, no?
No. The implementation I had in mind for Solution 4 is very simple: check
if the top level page itself is part of an extension. That means
Menu.WebHome, Sandbox.WebHome, XWiki.WebHome, etc. Checking if there is
some nested child page created by the user inside a top level page is way
to complex and time consuming. So it doesn't matter if the application has
Code and Data nested pages. What matters is that the home page of the
application is part of an extension and thus that page and all its children
will not appear in the navigation panel.
Another note: I’m probably not understanding something because I don’t see
the point of hiding, say, ReleaseNotes.Archives when we’ll display
ReleaseNotes.Data.*. It could even be seen as a regression (I’m assuming in
this example that ReleaseNotes.Archives is a page of the ReleaseNotes app,
which it isn’t FTM).
I also fail to see how this will remove XWiki and Home
from the Nav menu
since they’re not apps/extensions…
Solution 4 is about top level *pages* that *belong* to an extension. If the
XWiki and Home pages (WebHomes) wouldn't be part of an extension then you
wouldn't have them installed with the Standard flavor.
XWiki.WebHome
https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/master/xwiki-platform-distribu…
is part of xwiki-platform-distribution-ui
Main.WebHome
https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/master/xwiki-platform-distribu…
is part of xwiki-platform-distribution-flavor-common
So both would be excluded (along with all their child pages) from the
navigation tree. Main.WebHome could be kept though if we check also the
page type (as Thomas mentioned): keep top level pages that belong to an
extension if they are "editable" (based on their type, the XAR page type
introduced by Thomas recently).
Last point: when you say “top level pages are excluded” you mean default
extension pages, not top level pages created by the app when it’s used,
right?
The plan would be to use the Extension Manager API to check if a page is
part of an extension and ATM this is limited to the pages that are include
in the extension XAR package. If the application creates at runtime a top
level page then that page would be shown.
When you create a top level page,
it's shown automatically in the tree.
Thanks
-Vincent
>
> Then we can work on optimizing this later on when we decide how we do
the
> separation between Content and apps and it’ll
depend a lot on how we do
it.
>
> If we don’t fo this we risk rushing into a suboptimal solution.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks
> -Vincent
>
>>
>>> Also they might create their own apps and they will want
>>> those to be part of the navigation.
>>
>>
>> They would want to have an entry in the application panel like the rest
> of
>> the apps I think.
>>
>>
>>> The ideal navigation should be able to
>>> state some important pages to be shown (static aspect), order that
list
> in
>>> terms of priority, and later contain and navigate to pages created by
> the
>>> user or team (dynamic aspect). Adding metadatas to pages and creating
> apps
>>> on top of content is a major feature of XWiki and I don't want to
remove
>>> these pages from the navigation.
>>> -0
>>>
>>> I prefer solution 3, but with the ability to sort and also to include
> some
>>> dynamic parts :) is this possible?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Caty
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I prefer solution 4.
>>>>
>>>> WDYT?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Marius