[Zope3-dev] UI effort at Sprintathon

[Shane Hathaway]

Paul wrote:
>>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.

Joachim Werner wrote:
> I have been one of the "no Javascript, no CSS" guys for years, too. I still
> think that writing tools that only require basic HTML in the GUI is a good
> idea and a nice challenge. But to compete on the market (and that's what it
> is about for us in the field), we need a better UI than anything that can be
> built using pure HTML only. And while the old Javascript or Java Applet
> stuff really was a pain to write and to use, more modern approaches are
> really beautiful. Plone already makes use of some of this new elegance
> (which doesn't necessarily mean that I visually like all of Plone, but
> that's not the point).

Well, these are good insights, but I really think this is a moot point 
right now.  Lesson #1 to be learned from Zope 2 ZMI is that the UI must 
be modular.  Once the UI is modular, you can plug in page elements that 
use whiz-bang browser features or you can use stodgy HTML.  Once we 
achieve modularity, both UIs will follow.  Look at CMF and Plone: we at 
ZC purposely put no effort into making CMF pretty, because we knew that 
if we made the UI replaceable, someone would come along and do the work 
for us, and that's just what happened. :-)  Now, a modular UI is even 
more inviting for designers than a replaceable UI, so the effect should 
happen faster than it did for CMF.

> So, even if it is hard for the developers, they (we) should try to at least
> look at the new possibilities (and kepp them in mind) and make sure that
> there is no code that depends on passing back an HTML page (like the current
> copy&paste or delete stuff).

Well, that's a given. :-)

Shane