[xwiki-devs] [UX] Page templates availability
Hi, The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button. One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message. This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location? B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location? Let me know what you think. Thanks, Caty Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2] http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
Hi Caty,
On 06 Jun 2016, at 18:31, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location? B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
Let me know what you think.
I think there are lots of various use cases and that both A and B are interesting to have. I wouldn’t deprecate what we have (i.e. A). I would simply add B. Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2] http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
I've already met the need to have B on a project based on XWiki. Like Vincent, I would simply add B and makes A optional. 2016-06-06 21:07 GMT+02:00 Vincent Massol <[email protected]>:
Hi Caty,
On 06 Jun 2016, at 18:31, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location? B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
Let me know what you think.
I think there are lots of various use cases and that both A and B are interesting to have. I wouldn’t deprecate what we have (i.e. A). I would simply add B.
Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Delhumeau ([email protected]) Research & Development Engineer at XWiki SAS Committer on the XWiki.org project
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
This mail's purpose is to debate:
A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
Templates should be visible everywhere otherwise they can't be discovered. We can't expect the user to know she has to go to a particular location in order to create some type of page, and even if she does go there, chances are that she will use the dedicated create button found on the application home page or on a panel visible on the application space rather than the + button.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I don't think we should recommend this. Of course, an application should be able to restrict the location if it needs to, but I think we should promote the idea that applications should let users create entries anywhere they want, as much as possible. Templates could specify a default location (e.g. when the user selects a template we fill the location with the default value) but the user should be able to change that location. Thanks, Marius
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem... _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hello all, On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture. Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc. Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these. I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary. Thanks, Anca
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem... _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Anca Luca <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello all,
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it
Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture.
Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc.
Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these.
<thinking out loud> Actually, the more I think, the more I realise that applications is a delicate subject and that it really depends on the application. Currently we have lots (if not all) of the applications which completely abstract the concept of page, so the concept of location of that page in the tree is not something that the user should bother about or even be aware of. This is currently how we handle most of the applications. We say that the meeting application creates "entries" or "meetings" but not "pages", that the calendar app creates "events". Same, blog application creates "blog posts". In none of these cases we don't say that those things are pages and that, just like any other page, they are/can be placed in the tree along with the other pages of the wiki. There are applications for which it's easy to introduce the concept of "location of a page" because it's easy to see the productions of that application as "pages" that need to be placed in the wiki tree (e.g. blog, meeting or events are in this case) but there are applications for which it's not that easy: e.g. file manager application, should one be able to decide where they create a folder or a file ? wouldn't it be confusing to have a folder that is, at the same time, a subfolder of another folder and the child page of another page? Same for the forum application:sShould the user creating topics in a forum be aware that they are pages so that they can choose their location in the wiki? In addition, both of these applications already have a hierarchical structure defined on top of the general wiki tree, and I'm afraid that giving the user the control on that could be confusing (and maybe add bugs? - If I'm not wrong, both forum and filemanager are relying / are planning to rely on the wiki pages tree to handle rights on their hierarchies). </thinking out loud> Thanks, Anca
I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary.
Thanks, Anca
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem... _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi, On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Anca Luca <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello all,
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it
I agree. Those 3 fields would need to be added to a template provider class. Note that these restrictions will add yet another point of technical debt in the ability to rename/move an application, should we want to support that at some point. Maybe we could leave that aside for now since it`s not a priority. A migrator will also have to be done for existing templates to use the new properties and the create UI and template provider sheet needs to be updated. On the policy side, re the recommendation for new providers, I guess it is up to them to decide if it makes sense for their application to enforce, recommend or to allow any location where the template can create pages. On the visibility side, though, I think we can safely recommend to allow the template to be visible everywhere by default and let the admin set restriction at runtime, depending on his needs. Thanks, Eduard
Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture.
Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc.
Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these.
I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary.
Thanks, Anca
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi, A remaining thing to clarify is how to handle these restrictions in relation with the Nesting feature. * For visibility restrictions, I believe it is safe to continue with the current behavior, that is to show the template provider in the specified location (space) and its children (subspaces). * For the default creation location, this does not apply * For creation restrictions, we need some consensus. Do we also allow creation in the children of the specified location restriction? ** This can create problems to the usecase when you use this field/restriction to make sure that an application properly reads the new entries by restricting creation to a specific space. If you were to allow children, the app would not properly read the new entries. Sure, you might say that the app needs fixing, but, depending on the app, it may not be possible. ** On the other side, in general templates (or for templates of apps that support nesting), allowing children for the restriction might be needed. *** Note that currently (recently implemented) we are allowing the creation in child spaces of the existing restrictions. ** Should we have a 4th "allow children" option, a boolean/checkbox value, to control the behavior of the creation restrictions to suit both major cases? Of course, we will not be able to have more complex settings (like 2 spaces with children and 2 spaces without children), but we could accept this limitation since it would probably be an edge case anyway. Another note on the differentiation between visibility and creation restrictions is that, in terms of UI, it would require some reworking, since having 2 trees in the same UI is not a good idea. Thanks, Eduard On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Eduard Moraru <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Anca Luca <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello all,
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it
I agree. Those 3 fields would need to be added to a template provider class.
Note that these restrictions will add yet another point of technical debt in the ability to rename/move an application, should we want to support that at some point. Maybe we could leave that aside for now since it`s not a priority.
A migrator will also have to be done for existing templates to use the new properties and the create UI and template provider sheet needs to be updated.
On the policy side, re the recommendation for new providers, I guess it is up to them to decide if it makes sense for their application to enforce, recommend or to allow any location where the template can create pages. On the visibility side, though, I think we can safely recommend to allow the template to be visible everywhere by default and let the admin set restriction at runtime, depending on his needs.
Thanks, Eduard
Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture.
Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc.
Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these.
I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary.
Thanks, Anca
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Eduard Moraru <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
A remaining thing to clarify is how to handle these restrictions in relation with the Nesting feature.
* For visibility restrictions, I believe it is safe to continue with the current behavior, that is to show the template provider in the specified location (space) and its children (subspaces).
* For the default creation location, this does not apply
* For creation restrictions, we need some consensus. Do we also allow creation in the children of the specified location restriction? ** This can create problems to the usecase when you use this field/restriction to make sure that an application properly reads the new entries by restricting creation to a specific space. If you were to allow children, the app would not properly read the new entries. Sure, you might say that the app needs fixing, but, depending on the app, it may not be possible. ** On the other side, in general templates (or for templates of apps that support nesting), allowing children for the restriction might be needed. *** Note that currently (recently implemented) we are allowing the creation in child spaces of the existing restrictions. ** Should we have a 4th "allow children" option, a boolean/checkbox value, to control the behavior of the creation restrictions to suit both major cases? Of course, we will not be able to have more complex settings (like 2 spaces with children and 2 spaces without children), but we could accept this limitation since it would probably be an edge case anyway.
Another note on the differentiation between visibility and creation restrictions is that, in terms of UI, it would require some reworking, since having 2 trees in the same UI is not a good idea.
We could display the selected paths (restrictions) using the breadcrumb displayer and use a tree picker to add more restrictions. path / to / page [Remove] path / to / some / other / page [Remove] [Add more restrictions] [Remove all restrictions] Something like http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Extension/CKEditor+Integratio... . Thanks, Marius
Thanks, Eduard
On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Eduard Moraru <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Anca Luca <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello all,
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:31 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < [email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
The Template Provider allows setting the locations where the template must be available. Some applications need/encourage their pages to be located in a particular app location. Currently, if we set such a location for a template, the template will be listed in the "Create Page" step only if the user navigates to that location and clicks on the "Add" button.
One behavior could be that all templates are displayed each time the user clicks on 'Add', regardless of the initial location. This would mean splitting the current Location functionality into "Template Visibility" and "Creation location restrictions": - Ideally "Template Visibility" should not be restricted, but we would need to keep this field in order to be backward compatible with the current behavior. - "Creation location restrictions" would indicate if the page needs to be created in a particular location. The user will not be allowed to create somewhere else and be warned by an error message.
I would identify 3 things that a template provider should be able to do: * be visible only in certain locations (the current feature, but maybe a bit more sophisticated) * recommend a location for the pages created from that template - "recommend" here would mean that the user could change that location if they wanted * restrict a location for the pages created from that template - "restrict" would mean that the location would be chosen by the template provider and the user would not be able to change it
I agree. Those 3 fields would need to be added to a template provider class.
Note that these restrictions will add yet another point of technical debt in the ability to rename/move an application, should we want to support that at some point. Maybe we could leave that aside for now since it`s not a priority.
A migrator will also have to be done for existing templates to use the new properties and the create UI and template provider sheet needs to be updated.
On the policy side, re the recommendation for new providers, I guess it is up to them to decide if it makes sense for their application to enforce, recommend or to allow any location where the template can create pages. On the visibility side, though, I think we can safely recommend to allow the template to be visible everywhere by default and let the admin set restriction at runtime, depending on his needs.
Thanks, Eduard
Note that the 3 above don't exclude eachother, so we can have them all implemented as options of the template provider. I think that the template provider should be able to fully control them. I.e. the template provider should decide if the location is to be restricted or only recommended. In addition, I see usecases for all 3 of them, so I don't think we should completely exclude one from the picture.
Now, in my opinion, the rest is about how we present these options in the creation screen (do we present them all as equally important?) and what do we implement for the default applications. See my answers to your questions below.
This mail's purpose is to debate: A. If templates should be visible everywhere or just in a particular location?
As I said, we should allow the template provider to decide that, as we currently do.
B. Should we recommend applications to restrict the creation of pages to a particular location?
I think this depends on the application, on what kind of data it stores, how it handles rights, etc.
Now, for a general recommendation, I think it would not be efficient to recommend restriction. I think at most we could guide towards a "recommended" location for the pages (in the sense described above), but it really depends on each application. There is great value in being able to create application pages anywhere on your wiki, so we shouldn't recommend against. HOWEVER My biggest concern here is that the users could very easily get confused between the application concept and the application page concept. For example, assume we'd have a blog post template provider available everywhere on the wiki, without a recommended location. I fear that the users will not realize that choosing the "Blog Post" template provider in the create page screen is not equivalent with creating a blog post using the create blog post form on the homepage of the blog application (the page accessible when clicking on the blog application). Same for all the app within minutes: "Create new entry" on the homepage of the application will create a new entry of the application "contained" in the application (read "in the data subtree of the application"), while choosing the template of that application from a create screen will not have the same effect. I can easily see the users getting a little confused with these.
I think we can have solutions to this confusion that are only reelated to presentation, not to technical stuff, so it should not be scary.
Thanks, Anca
Let me know what you think.
Thanks, Caty
Related: [1] http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-8759 [2]
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/HomepageSketches/HomepageTem...
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participants (6)
-
Anca Luca -
Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) -
Eduard Moraru -
Guillaume Delhumeau -
Marius Dumitru Florea -
Vincent Massol