[Zope-CMF] sitin with a designer

alan runyan runyaga@thisbox.com
Wed, 2 May 2001 10:52:14 -0500


'the default CMF view is tad confusing', said the designer.  essentially the
biggest problem they have overcoming the default CMF skin is that the
'actionBox' isnt distinguished enough from 'content'.  it makes for a fairly
confusing control panel.

here are some problems that were discussed:

*  you cant easily tell where you are (there are no consistent breadcrumbs)
*  when you add a folder you are dropped into the folder (w/o warning) and
w/o breadcrumbs you have no visual cue where you are
*  when you are adding content (applies to ZOPE as well -- saw someone
struggling today with it) - there is no cue where you are adding the content
(especially
since the left tree view doesnt sync with where you are in the right pane).
you see Add DTML Method and a description, it seems putting the breadcrumbs
above that wouldnt be too much trouble?
* he felt the actionBox and its state was very much distraction and said it
was visually disconnected from the main interface (i.e. it looked like
content, as stated before)
* he wanted the actionBox actions visually hidden unless he NEEDED them
(roll over at the top/menu style) - I asked him to draw up a comp and I will
try to help evolve it.
* when trying to skin teh default CMF he couldnt figure out all the places
the CSS were being used.

NOTES:
* after using GoLive w/ ZOPE - I see how PageTemplates could be *very*
effective workign w/ designers- or at least I think I see how...
* Dreamweaver appears to have major problems with ZOPE: can not rename (?)
files, no extensions causes problems, is there a way to know these nuances?
* Zope Tutorial was *too basic* for the designer.  he is not a programmer,
but he knows plenty about HTML.  He would purchase a book if it were not too
technical.  I believe he felt the Zope Book was a bit too technical.  I will
get more info.
* in CMF its a bit 'vast' OOTB.  in Interwoven seeing the 'branch' and
having a sandbox users can instantly feel like they can work on content.  is
there a way to 'site_load' a buncha html into a CMF?
* hopefully we will have a pretty ok, default CMF + nice colours skin *very
soon*

can we now using .'s in our object named w/o having unexpected
repercussions?  It seems you need the .html/.dtml for dreamweaver and goLive
to work properly (HTML Kit doenst need that) -- I've seen this discussed
before.  It seems that index.html works just great (at the root having
index_html saying if there is a index.html in the folder render it ;)

cheers

~runyaga
p.s. I originally sent this to cmf@zope.org but it didnt bounce... odd.