[Zope3-dev] Basis for use cases for the Site Designer

[Janko Hauser]

Hello, in the following I want to make a first start at some use cases
for the Z3WCM. I post to the mailing list, to hopefully start some
discussion as all this should not to be meant as complete proposal,
although the result of this should be put into the wiki.

I will concentrate at what was the Site Designer actor in the context
of the CMF.

First some links and words to the mental environment. The use cases
for the CMF build a strong starting point.

http://cmf.zope.org/rqmts/new_use_cases/index.html

Jim added some more thoughts to the Wiki, in this context
specifically (sorry for the wrapping):

http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture

[1] /ContentTypesInZope3

[2] /CMFContentTypeDesign

[3] /ThroughTheWebDevelopmentInZope3

[4] /SiteDesigner

I hope I use a similar wording, as is used in the wiki pages.

Goal: (Z3 goal) The Site Designer is responsible for producing and 
maintaining
the "look and feel" of a site. This includes graphics, layout,
navigation and other human factors.

(Z3WCM goal) The Site Designer is responsible for the views of the
different content types. There a different views for the managment
and for the presentation of content types. I see here two different
actors. The CMS-Designer and the Deployment Site Designer. They are
working at different times and stages of development, they do not need
to have the same technical knowledge. The first is doing it's work
once and then build on top of this, the second does need to redo
everything for every new customer.

Use cases for the CMS Designer:

   - Identify content-objects which should be managed by the CMS

   - Identify services which should have customized integrated views

   - Customize the look and feel of the managment views of the included
     content objects.

   - Define the look and feel of meta views. These are views which are
     the basis of the implemented CMS. Navigate a site on the managment
     side, integrate short cuts or menues to other managment screens
     (user mgmt, login, contact, feedback forms etc.), present
     collections of content and mgmt. views for them.


Use cases for the Deployment Site Designer:

   - Define common layout characteristics for a site.

       This is related to the current skin mechanism in the CMF. Global
       stylesheets, common blocks, like header, navigation views.

   - Customize the common layout in some parts of the site.

   - Define actual layout and presentation of content-objects.

       There are centralized places for theses views.

       This is different from the skin mechanism, as it is strongly
       conntected to one content-type. There could be many different
       layout views for the same content-type. But each layout view is
       only connected to one content-type. A discussable example would
       be lists. Are they a content-type, or just a view on a bunch of
       similar items?

    - Manage the mapping of layout views to content-types and define
      names for them.

        The names are possibly customer related. Not all content
        providers can see the same list of possible layout views.


As a note I want to raise the question, if "Designer" is really the
right word vor these actors, especially for the CMS Designer actor. 
Every designer needs at least to know, how to get simple information 
from the corresponding view class. She needs to be able to navigate the
managment screens, and have a little overview about the functioning of
the CMS. That's more than a typical dreamweaver artist. Suggestions
for other names are Implementor, Integrator, Layouter.

With regards,
__Janko




-- 
i.A. Dr. Janko Hauser
Software Engineering
c o m . u n i t   G m b H
online-schmiede seit 1994

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