[Zope3-dev] UI effort at Sprintathon

[Paul Everitt]

You note in your wiki post (thanks for writing that up!) that:

"""
  ZopeUI will focus on UIsx that are built for modern web browsers  
(mainly MS IE 6.x and Mozilla/Netscape).
"""

Alas, I don't think there is agreement on this point in the world of  
Zope 3.  (Note I'm not giving my personal opinion, just gauging the  
collective opinion).  In fact, there isn't even agreement to require  
CSS.

I personally don't think that the collective can yield an exceptional  
UI for Zope 3.  An adequate UI, perhaps.

Rather, I think someone with vision and determination will have to step  
in, to create something that is likely to be rejected by the hard-core  
geeks, but wildly embraced by the actual audience.  In fact, resistance  
from the hard-core geeks might actually be proof that it is going in  
the right direction. :^)

IMO, that's been the missing ingredient: someone with a lot of  
determination, perseverance, commitment.

I'm also convinced that we need a small step first.  I think we must  
ignore Big Ideas (which is difficult for me, because I agree a lot with  
what you wrote) during this first step.  We badly need to get some kind  
of face on Zope 3, in order to start attracting more manpower.

I think this was a lesson learned by Mozilla in the early days.  You  
can't get enough people interested in a pile of code that doesn't yet  
do anything they can relate to.  And without enough people to *do*  
things, you can't produce anything useful.  (Repeat vicious cycle.)   
For more on this, read the list of excuses at:

   http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html

Accomplishing what you wrote takes talent that isn't currently in Zope  
3.  We need to get those kinds of people involved.  I'm not sure that  
it is possible right now for those people to participate in Zope 3.

Porting the ZMI, in a way that promotes tinkering by designers, is one  
possible way to get these people involved.  But the moment they have to  
learn about components, factories, contexts, configuration directives,  
etc. is the moment that developers will have to resume the UI effort.

--Paul

On mercredi, oct 23, 2002, at 12:38 Europe/Paris, Joachim Werner wrote:

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