[Zope3-dev] UI effort at Sprintathon

[Joachim Werner]

Hi!

> I agree with this point.  Based on lessons learned from the UI
> mini-sprint in Brazil, I think it's important beforehand to set
> specific and realistic targets for what should be done at the sprint.
> It's very easy to expand the scope, especially when someone like me is
> around. :^)

Here I have collected my first thoughts about the UI topic:

http://www.zope.org//Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture/ZopeUI

I am pretty sure that the scope I have chosen has to be narrowed down for
the Sprintathon. But I don't want to START with narrowing down. My intention
was to collect as many ideas as possible, and more are to come.

Last week I went to SYSTEMS, the Munich IT fair, for a day. Nothing new in
general. BTW: Zope was represented by two companies, Struktur AG and
Lightwerk, not bad ...

But what really impressed me is what people from the PHP (e.g. Flying Dog,
see http://www.flyingdog.biz) or Microsoft camps are currently doing with
the browser as a client application. With IE 6, and to some extent also with
Mozilla, you can really have great UIs with true WYSIWYG, copy & paste, drag
& drop, etc.

The core point is that they often don't use a simple REQUEST-RESPONSE model
but open an application that permanently communicates with the server in the
back, using XML-RPC and the like. So you can do things like server-based
link or spell checking on the fly!

I can remember the first XUL efforts for Mozilla-Zope. Those were quite
similar in scope, but they were never finished ...

> The first question, which you've hinted at: should this UI sprint focus
> on a ZMI for Zope 3, or focus on building ZMIs for Zope 3?

I'd say let's think about a UI for a Zope-based Content Management System.
So the two efforts on the Sprintathon get somehow related. This should
include all the UI issues that we need in a "plain" Zope3. We could take the
existing approaches (Zope, CMF, Plone, Silva, Kontentor, ...) and collect
something like a "best-of" (or best practice). IF possible within the
limited time frame, the result should be a non-functional mockup with
interlinked static pages (or let it be PowerPoint slides, I don't care) that
can actually be used as if it worked.

The "building ZMIs FOR Zope 3" part will be the second step. When we know
what we need we can decide what tools to implement to get it. This is an
approach that I think would be quite good for all of Zope 3. Currently I see
a lot of very academic ideas and concepts (like the Object Hub). I am sure
that they are cool, but we workers in the field are mainly interested in
getting our job done ...

It will be very hard for me to decide whether I focus on the UI or the CMS
part of the Sprintathon ...

Cheers

Joachim