[Framework-Team] [Plone-UI] PLIP 12227: In-Plone Theme Editor

Denys Mishunov denys.mishunov at gmail.com
Thu Mar 8 21:57:37 UTC 2012


Hi Martin,

Thanks for the answers. I like those "Good point" things :) I have attached PDF with 2 mockups — one for the configlet and the second one for the mapper. I believe we don't need any more views and everything should be covered by them. Please, also check some of my comments inline below.

On Mar 8, 2012, at 5:53 PM, Martin Aspeli wrote:

>> 	• When on "Create theme" tab it should allow me to upload the theme right there wihout switching tabs back and forth. This is important — the form doesn't allow me to create completely new theme from scratch so it has to allow me to upload a theme here.
> 
> Great idea! Of course, this assumes some kind of pre-step where we build locally and then upload. I think that's one workflow. I think others, especially those mainly tinkering/playing with Plone, will want to do everything inside Plone.

We should cater for both scenarios. But those "tinkering" with Plone are going to only 'tinker' with the editor as well — it's going to be only part of their Plone exploration and not necessarily large part. So we should prioritize those who will need to do the stuff for real in my opinion. We can not cater each and every — set strict priorities and adjust once a use case or an issue come.

> I was thinking something really minimal, boilerplate-like, possibly based on Twitter Bootstrap or similar. If you could do it, fantastic! I think it should be thought of more as a template/skeleton than a demo, so hence I wasn't too keen on the 'rich' GPL themes.

Will see what I can come up with as a simple boilerplate theme. But it's not going to happen in the coming days.

>> 	• If we will give the ability to edit the theme itself TTW is it possible, to let people preview the theme (not the mapped content + theme result, but the plain theme itself) after the changes they've made?
> Yeah. You can do that in the mapper, but there was a suggestion to have a preview in the file manager too. Any UI suggestions/mockups on how that would look? You'd need to pick which HTML file to start from, since there could be multiple to preview.

In my mockups we don't need this as a separate view at all now — there is no separate file manager view, hence no need for a separate preview feature.

> 	• "Last saved:" information should be much more prominent after one has saved a selector. Something like color highlight that dims down after some time. Right now it is using the same font color as the content of a panel located on a really light gray background and you should really know where to look for in order to notice it.
> Good idea. Can you suggest some styling that would be clearer? Or help fix? ;-)

Will try. No promises though.

>> 	• The interaction betwen the panels should be more interactive. I have saved some elements in the panels without adding a new rule. What do I do next with that info? The info is not copied in my copy/paste buffer, the information is not copied to my rules file, for example. Probably it's not a task for this phase but this experience should be thought through. For now at least a toolbox (and the functionality of course) with a hint of what should I do now ("Want to create a rule for this selector?") should popup. Or we just don't allow selecting the elements outside of the add-new-rule process.
> Interacting with the copy/paste buffer is a bit tricky if not done by user action, at least in some browsers. 

This means we disable selection outside of "add new rule" cycle I would say. The fact that we can do that [selecting elements just for the sake of selection] doesn't mean we should — this adds noise and questions that are left unanswered.

>> 	• On the other hand, when I click "Save" for the rules file, I would like to see some feedback from the preview panel like that flash we have after adding a rule. Just local for the preview panel. Otherwise, if I work with an element in the footer I have no idea whether preview has been updated or not — the element I care about is not visible in this case.
> Good point. Could you suggest a better feedback mechanism than flashing the editor? A portal message maybe?

Need to think.

>> 	• Nothing tells me that by changing and saving the rules I make permanent changes immediately available on the site. In this case we should get rid of all "preview" labels and titles since there is no preview — there is an end result in any case. Or I would prefer to somehow keep the changes I make and then have a large button "Update the site" or something like that that would push the changes to the site.
> 
> It does if the theme is currently active. It doesn't need to be.
> We should update the text.
> Making a 'working copy' model for this is a next-generation feature, I think. We should do it, but it's probably too much to bite off now.

I see the problem. Check my mockup #1 to see the proposal on this. No need for a new working copy model. We can workaround with existing stuff.

> 	• Is it possible to save selector in the panels on click and not on Enter? This would be much more intuitive way of doing things. When I am working with applying rules I don't need to interact with content. If I need to check other pages I go to the site (that has the theme already applied by now) and check it there. Or we can have another button like "Interactive mode" for example. It should be disabled by default and no interaction should happen.
> I thought it worked on click. It's supposed to, certainly - there's JS to intercept clicks when the rule selector is active. Which browser did you use?

As my review says it's Google Chrome 18.0.1025.45 beta. Anyway everything is telling me that click doesn't work there. Even the help text below the panel:

""Hover over an element to see its selector. Press Esc to move the selection to its parent. Press Enter to save or confirm the selection."

> So, seems like we have a number of tweaks to make, and some flow/layout things to change. I'm hoping to get some mockups to help guide those as per the comments above.

Check my mockups and don't hesitate to ask if something looks weird or unclear.

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Best regards,
Denys Mishunov

http://mishunov.me
@mishunov










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