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

[Alec Mitchell]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net> wrote:
> 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. :)

But since we need it and it effectively solves the same problem, why
concentrate effort on the less general solution.  Having both will
likely give us a few too many ways to do the same thing.

Also, +1 on Jon's suggestion for making portlet order independent of
portlet assignment type.  This is a pretty major shortcoming of the
portlet system.

Alec