8 Apr
2011
8 Apr
'11
4:59 p.m.
On Apr 7, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) wrote:
On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 11:57, Luca Anca
<lucaa(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
I like having a dashboard as the home page, it's very logical to me and quite common
in lots of tools.
Now for the title, it's better that it reflects the content of the page IMO.
Thanks
-Vincent
Hello devs,
as suggested before, I would like to make the main page of the wiki a
full dashboard, namely to relocate the welcome message in a gadget so
that the type of page of the main page is more clear. See this two
screenshots about how it could look (one is with default style, other is
with panels style).
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Design/GadgetIntegration/WikiDashbo…
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Design/GadgetIntegration/WikiDashbo…
(also
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Design/GadgetIntegration/MainDashbo…) if
you want to import it in your own wiki and play with it.
I want to discuss the following points now:
1/ is the title "Wiki Dashboard" ok for the main page of the wiki?
IMO I don't like at all the panels style
(WikiDashboardPanels.png<http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Design/G…)g>).
It adds too much weight on the visual aspect and does not bring any value.
IMO the dashboard should be something invisible, like magic somehow for the
editor, not for the viewer. The editor should benefit from all the
advantages a dashboard system offers: easily add new modules, configure or
manage existing ones, without writing too much code.
I don't understand why if we have a new feature ("dashboard") we should
emphase it like this: changing the look of the homepage, changing the title.
I don't want my homepage to look like JIRA. My wiki should be based and
focused on the content, not on the back techniques I use.
With the panels style I'm more focused that I use 4 types of gadgets, than
to actually see what is the content of those gadgets.
So what if the user will not know that we have now dashboards? They will see
that if they go to edit mode. This feature will help them achieve things
faster, but is not necessary to change the way they were doing things until
now.
As a conclusion, IMO the main page should be "Welcome ...", or
"Home"; "Wiki
Dashboard" doesn't sound like a starting page for me (unless maybe if I am a
technical user, but also not in this case). And the naming is very important
because it will prefix all the breadcrumbs. 
2/ Is the
welcome message visible enough, is it accessible to users and
explanatory about what the page is about and what they could do next?
Regarding this and also http://xwiki.markmail.org/thread/b3xyxpg5f5wla4h7 I
think we should change something.
I work for 2 years at XWiki and tested every day snapshots and this is the
first time I read that message and didn't provide me anything of help.
We could do a help gadget or an introduction gadget (that can be easily
removed using the dashboard system) to help new users out.
Thanks,
Caty
> 3/ what would be the relation now with the old Main.Dashboard page,
> which, as you can see in the quick links panel, is a "Wiki Dashboard"
> itself? Should it be the same page? if so, is it ok that the welcome
> message appears on the wiki dashboard? if they're not the same page then
> it's a bit strange that they're called the same but 2 different pages...
> Should we rename one?
>
> Technically the welcome message is written in a new page, Main.Welcome,
> and then included in a gadget in the dashboard. This page can be
> translated for getting the message in different languages.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks,
> Anca