[xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] Templates exposure

Hi devs, This roadmap we had 2 suggestions: - "Find a way of avoiding to have 2 "Add" entries ("+" and "Add new entry")" in AWM - "Drop down on "+" Menu + Admin UI to select some templates" What we have implemented so far was: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-14310 "Propose and pre-select "recommended" templates in the create UI based on the current location" So now, if you go to the Blog app and create on the "+" button, since Blog provides a template with a create restriction, the "Blog" template will be preselected. Also, AWM has the option to create a template for each application the users create. So after you created your app with AWM and go to the "+" button, the app template will be preselected. This will allow us in the future to remove the AWM actions area and rely on the "+" button. In the future, we could also separate templates in their own "Recommended" category. A separate category will be necessary for applications that provide multiple related templates (like Forum for example that will contain the Forum, Topic templates) or in the more general case when multiple templates are recommended for the current location. Currently we are doing only sorting and preselecting the first one. In terms of implementation we just need to make sure all our recommended apps provide template providers and after that we could change the UI for AWM and remove the "Add" action from the actions area. Now, I want to ask your opinion on the suggestion to add a dropdown for the "+" button. Some input: - a dropdown will not be scalable: you cannot have more than a few options there; - in a dropdown you cannot specify the page name; - in the dropdown you cannot change or specify another location - you always need to go to the page first and after choose a template from the dropdown list; - you will only see an admin selection of templates - so we invalidate the templates filtering and you cannot even choose another template after your initial selection; - we make the current create step deprecated, since users will not see it anymore. The main reason of this request was to increase visibility and order for the templates. In the user recording sessions I've seen and with the current layout (2 columns, templates on right) users don't have problems seeing the "Templates" section in the Create step. Now, for the ordering / selection - the current mechanism of automatic ordering is a step in that direction - but sure we could implement more (like the separate category I described earlier). Another difference between what was asked and what was currently implemented is that now the selection comes from the Template Provider; while the idea was to allow the Administrator to select the displayed Templates. With the current implementation we can still create an administration UI to select them and save the changes in the Template Providers, in a future iteration. ----- So the question is: - Do you have other ideas on how we could solve the requests? - What do you think about having a dropdown with the templates selection - compared to a recommended category in the creation step? Thanks, Caty