[Zope-PTK] FYI: Review of current snapshot

Mike Pelletier mike@metamike.net
Thu, 13 Jan 2000 11:24:48 -0500 (EST)


On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Paul Everitt wrote:

>     Need an icon.

    Okay, I've made one (a slightly ajar door with a 'Z' on it) and it'll
be in the next snapshot.

>     The first page of the Add ZopeOrg Portal should look a lot better,
>     more like the wizard I have in the mockup.  BTW, just to be clear,
>     I predict that _Guests_ will be creating portals as well as
>     Manager.

    I went and made a nice Wizard object for the Portal Wizard last night,
but I ran into a nasty problem in that means it can't be used.  Wizards
are ZClasses.  You can tell the ZopeOrgPortal_factory to use it as the add
form, but it will raise an exception because factories try to call the
form, not just redirect to it.  ZClasses can't be called yet!  I guess the
answer is to have the add form link to the wizard.

>     Do you think we need to replace "Next" submit buttons with
>     graphics?

    I don't think we need to, but it would be a nice touch.  A back button
would also be good.  I'll put that in when I make the wizards re-runnable
to reconfigure objects.

>     Can we combine the last two steps and let them create an account
>     that is also the person the email comes from?

    Good idea, yes.

>     I see URLs like "join_form".  I think we need to get away from not
>     having .html in our object ids.  I think it just confuses people.
>     However, it makes it inconvenient to access things from Python
>     expressions.

    Why do you see the lack of '.html' as a problem?  I think renaming
everything to end in '.html' would be a Bad Thing.

    - Members won't stick to the convention, it will be inconsistent
      Some Members may think they _have_ to use it, causing more confusion

    - Many URLs are to a non-template object, these will not have '.html'

    - We would be educating our users in the wrong direction

    - I think people rarely look at the URL anyway

    These are just rationalizations I've come up with.  My only real
reason is that I just don't like it.  If you can't be swayed let me know,
but it's only fair to warn you that I will complain about it at LEAST
three more times.  ;-)

>     Why does the users see a warning in red about "automatically
>     generated form" when changing preferences?  Also, preferences
>     should display last login and various roles.

    That is meant to be a note to whoever is installing the site.  The
form for non-system properties is generated by using the property's id as
the label of the input.  This is cheesy, and should be replaced with a
hand-made form with English-labelled fields.  I wanted to make it ugly and
scary to encourage the installer to do so.

>     Clicking on My Stuff goes to /desktop, but I get the portal home
>     page.  On the home page, "Manage Your Member folder" goes to
>     /Members/me/Members/Anonymous User/manage.  Thus, I don't see a
>     way to get to the desktop. :^( I'll switch over to the URL on your
>     box.

    It sounds like you're not actually logged in.  Odd.  You shouldn't
even get the options while not logged in.

>     Jakob Nielssen 

    What's a Jakob Nielssen?

>     The textarea for typing in content is WAY too wide!  Yikes!  I'd
>     like to see the "wider" and "taller" buttons which grap a
>     preference that is editable on preferences.  Also, people should
>     be able to choose from the three formats, per the "Member Adds
>     Document" use case.

    Heh, I don't know what you're talking about, Paul, it's exactly 80
columns, the _only_ civilized width.  You are correct, of course, it
should use the dtpref settings.

>     The "first page, last page" navigation should only appear if there
>     are more desktop items than can appear (ten in each column).

    Those placeholders are there to avoid interface elements (prev page,
next page) from seeming to pop in and out of existance.  Like seeing an
unlit lamp on the dash of a car, it lets you know where to look for an
item when it becomes available.  Unfortunately, 'first/last page' is
easilly misconstrued as a verb, so I'll ditch them.

>     Editing a page should have "Save" instead of "Commit".  Also, how
>     does one get *out* of editing a page?

    While in the edit dialog, the 'Edit this' link changes to 'View
this'.  That way you can fairly easily toggle views.

>     Should every folder have some default items to edit things like
>     the home page of the folder, the submenu, etc?

    At the very least, it should have 'title' I think.  Though... objects
Members add will have their own titles.  Maybe we don't want users to even
know Folders have titles.  But, yeah, I should provide access to some sort
of folder knobs.

    By setting the "home page" of a folder, you mean to make it serve
something other than index_html by default?

>     Why does "Advanced Mode" show up on the desktop page but not the
>     Wizard page?

    IIRC, Advanced Mode is meant to be context-sensitive.  If you do not
have the 'View management screens' permission on the current object, you
do not get the 'Advanced Mode' object.  Presently, that link goes to the
management interface of the present folder, I think that's not the
behaviour you had in mind for it.  I'll have to fix it.

>     As noted in the PTK Guide, each piece of content (a portal, a
>     member, a document) should have id, title (optional), and
>     _description_ (optional).

    Ahh!  Right, thanks.  I'll put that on the base class.

-- 
Mike Pelletier                          email: mike@digicool.com
Mild mannered software developer          icq: 7127228
by day, super villain by night.         phone: 519-884-2434