[Framework-Team] Re: PLIP 244: Portlet management improvements

[Jon Stahl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: framework-team-bounces at lists.plone.org [mailto:framework-team-
> bounces at lists.plone.org] On Behalf Of Martin Aspeli
> Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 3:39 PM
> To: framework-team at lists.plone.org
> Subject: [Framework-Team] Re: PLIP 244: Portlet management
improvements
> 
> Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Previously Martin Aspeli wrote:
> >>  - Create a "site wide" portlet category for portlets that should
show
> >> on all pages (unless blocked). Currently, people have to use
contextual
> >> portlets at the root of the site for this, which gets cumbersome
since
> >> if you block them in one folder, you need to re-add all portlets in
> >> subfolders.
> >
> > This feels like a workaround for the fact that you can not
selectively
> > block portlets.
> 
> I used to think that way, I'm not so sure anymore. Speaking to people
> about this over the past few months, I've come to realise that our
model
> of thinking that the site root is the "parent" of all content from
which
> things like portlets can inherit if they need to be site-wide is not
how
> people tend to think about it.
> 
> I think to most people, the root is the front page and is just a page.
> You may want some portlets on the front page, or you may want some
> portlets that are global and show up (almost) everywhere. In our
current
> model, the "workaround" is that you have to be careful to assign
> portlets to the root and then not block them unduly. This gets
> unnatural, especially if you have deep or complex content hierarchies.
> 
> > I would prefer a method where you can both block
> > individual portlets and block only for the current object is,
similar
> > to how you propose a flag to only show a portlet in the current
object.
> 
> Right, we need that too. :)

One other thought to contribute to this topic:

Right now, the system renders all placeful portlets, then all group
portlets, then all type portlets.

If a user wants to have portlets in a "mixed" order, that is pretty much
impossible.

Perhaps we can add a simple "weight" value to each portlet, then order
portlets by weight, regardless of whether they are place, group or type
portlets?

There are some UI considerations, and maybe this is too invasive.  But
we get it a fair amount.

:jon