[Zope3-dev] Site configuration UI (was New Software Space UI)

[Paul Everitt]

(Changing the thread title to focus on one part of the problem.)

At EuroPython I took some notes from the afternoon session we spent with 
a couple of site managers:

   http://www.zope-europe.org/articles/200501/z3scripternotes

After that, I took some notes which I rewrote based on this discussion 
(primarily, pulling out the site developer stuff):

   http://www.zope-europe.org/articles/200501/zope3devdiscussion

I need to put more info there, but I'll likely move it to the zope3 wiki 
if it is worth continuing??

Finally, I realized that CMF and Plone (perhaps CPS too, need to ask 
Florent) have facilities for TTW site configuration.  I made a 3.4 Mb 
narrated Flash movie as a tour of the Plone UI for site management:

 
http://zea.zope-europe.org/~paul/movies/z3siteman/z3siteman_media/z3siteman.swf

Some notes on this narrated tour:

1) The Plone UI makes it look like you're installing Zope products, but 
that's not the case.  The CMF has a facility for taking an installed 
Zope product and wiring it into a local site.  I think that's what Zope 
3 wants also for activation vs. installation (though if TTW packages 
work out, you might actually be installing packages?)

2) IMO the most useful things to glean:

a. A global action labelled "plone setup" that doesn't talk about 
software engineering terms.  It's the entry point to configuration and 
is always visible for site managers.  Makes it easy to document and train.

b. The control panel is a series of items that talk about what they do, 
rather than what they are (tool, adapter, utility, whatever).  For the 
most part, these words don't appear in the UI.

c. It's pretty easy for package developers to plug into this via a 
configlet system (as shown in the Kupu part).

--Paul