[Framework-Team] Feedback on New Collections for Plone 4.2

[Alex Clark]

Hi.

On 7/5/11 3:38 PM, Alec Mitchell wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> The framework team on the cusp of approving an exciting new
> Collections implementation for Plone 4.2 and would like to get a
> little feedback on how the migration process should work.  In
> particular, we would like some advice from people who have extensive
> user training and support experience.
>
> The add-on provides a new Collection type which is intended to replace
> the current Collection implementation from ATContentTypes  It does not
> provide a migration path from old Collections to the new ones.  Custom
> templates designed for the ATCT Collection type will probably need to
> be modified to work with the new collection type.  Additionally, the
> user interface for managing collections has been completely overhauled
> (entirely for the better).  For newly installed sites, the ATCT
> Collection type will probably be removed from the Add Menu and only
> the new Collection type will be addable, to avoid user confusion.
> However, there's some concern about what to do when migrating existing
> sites.
>
> There may be many existing sites which depend heavily on use of the
> ATCT Collections.  These sites may have invested time and money in
> training to use ATCT Collections (in part because ATCT Collections are
> amazingly unintuitive).  These sites may have developed custom
> templates for their ATCT Collections.  We want to make sure that the
> migration process is relatively painless and unsurprising for those
> sites.
>
> Do you, as people with extensive support and training experience, feel
> that it would be acceptable to disable adding of AT collections in
> favor of the new more usable collections during migration?  Is it
> likely that a significant number of deployments would be negatively
> impacted by such a switch?  If the old type were disabled, would clear
> documentation describing how to re-enable adding it be a sufficient
> mitigation?  Would it be preferable to keep the old Collection type in
> the add menu, but change the title to one which makes it clear that it
> is no longer recommended (e.g. "Old-Style Collections")?


+1. Every single experience I've had teaching Collections has gone 
something like this: "OK This doesn't make any sense, but…"

I don't think the end can come any sooner, and if the end means turning 
off the old and turning on the new with no migration path, so be it.

(Collections are otherwise a great feature and perhaps one of Plone's 
best, just not approachable in any way to content editors. I've not seen 
the new implementation, but if it's truly exciting that will make 4.2 
that much more exciting.)

Alex


P.S. Not to mention this step could buy more time/provide incentive for 
someone to write a migrator.


>
> We would like to balance the need to provide a consistent environment
> for both new users and those migrating from an older version with the
> desire to make the migration both painless and straightforward.  Any
> feedback or suggestions you can provide would be welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Alec Mitchell
> Plone 4.2 Framework Team


-- 
Alex Clark · http://aclark.net