Working on 2.0: Developer sprint

[yellowled]

I'm a little uncertain of what I can be working on.

I realize it might be hard for others to understand what I'm doing right now and how this is supposed to look like at some point in the future. I have actually started to do basic layouts for the content areas of some subpages (new entry, edit entries, comments) of the backend. I think this is a good idea since it really showcases the needs and weaknesses of the current markup and styling. Problem is, I keep running into stuff which needs to be fixed in the markup, so I'm moving very slowly here.

You could think about and maybe prototype visual ideas. Doesn't have to be a full featured backend design, smaller “design modules” can help as well, e.g. “how could buttons look like” or “how could the dashboard look like”.

About the best you could do right now, and I realize this is also the hardest part, is figure out a good concept for the media db. Workflows, layouts, designs etc. Because I'll probably save that for the end again since it really is not a fun job …

You could, of course, also dig into the code and help out with quality assurance, markup consistency etc., but that might take some time to grasp what I've done so far, even with the hints in the codex document …

YL

[Timbalu]

As promised on the dev sprint, I converted the PoC Dashboard (at least in the main parts) to work with the current state of the new backend in 2.0. Therefore I branched to a 2.0 dashboard branch, which will keep all future merges with the development of the new backend. Maybe this will show as an example how that could look like - stick to be an unfinished PoC Plugin - or even move (partially) into the new backend.

[yellowled]

Ian, could you provide a zip download for the 2.0 dashboard? Seems like GitHub does not allow to download branches as zips any longer.

YL

[Timbalu]

I dont really want that to spread to the wild - but a GitHub zip should still do e.g.
https://github.com/name/repo/archive/2.0.zip
otherwise tell me again.

[yellowled]

I dont really want that to spread to the wild

Erm, if it is on GitHub in a public repo, it kind of is “in the wild”.

Anyway, getting branch zip files on GitHub seems to work again. I'll check this out in my dev blog asap.

YL

[yellowled]

Maybe this will show as an example how that could look like - stick to be an unfinished PoC Plugin - or even move (partially) into the new backend.

Okay, first of all: This pretty much does what I'd expect a dashboard to look like. I love that it's highly configurable, although I'm not even sure I understand every single details just yet.

It does, however, of couse not look too well in the new backend. That's no biggie since it seems to be fully templated, so I could just send you a pull request for the template files, right? Do you want me to do that or do you want to keep working on this yourself?

YL

[Timbalu]

It does, however, of couse not look too well in the new backend. That's no biggie since it seems to be fully templated, so I could just send you a pull request for the template files, right? Do you want me to do that ...?

Hmm, strange I already answered this this morning.... Maybe I accidentely hit preview....

YES please. I'd love to see progress!!
The new backend look is based to your current available 2k11/admin/style.css file, which I didn't touch, to see how that actually fits into the container views.

[yellowled]

The new backend look is based to your current available 2k11/admin/style.css file, which I didn't touch, to see how that actually fits into the container views.

Oh, boy. How do I put this? Let me be blunt: this is very, very hard to modify.

From what I've seen so far, it would need a lot of markup changes to fit nicely in the new backend. You also provide a lot of CSS, JS and images – most of which I think would become redundant in the new backend (e.g. images), are already included there (e.g. Modernizr), and/or might become obsolete in the new backend (e.g. jQuery UI). If I rewrite this, I'll most likely break more or less all the functionality provided by JS and drop all the styles and images.

I'm not sure that's efficient – it might be easier and quicker to just write a new dashboard from scratch, maybe even as part of the core. I'm also not sure it's a good thing to spend time on it just now since there's a lot of stuff to address in the rest of the backend. Then again, the dashboard would be a huge part of the new backend …

Phew. I literally have no idea how to proceed here.

YL

[Timbalu]

Well, that is what I tried to say. It is a slight surface conversion to 2.0 with the new backend markup, erverything else is coming from old markup in 1.6 and some changes for 1.7. And, it istill unfinished!

I did not want you to totally rewrite that thing, especially when cutting off all scripting functionality. I just remembered us talking about a possible (partitial) takeover into the new backend or inspiration on how to do things for the core backend.

It is not cleaned up at all, so files can be redundant by now or even be dropped at all and the css is surely a big mess and really needs a clean-up! The markup for the block_*.tpls could be rewritten and cleaned up slowly without breaking things, if keeping the structure and the function nodes. Their inner-structure was designed to be at least "21 century 2cd decade"; I can't see where this is to far away from a current modern markup... If you like to discus that, please send me a mail.

Again, the modal container view part is - inside - a cut of the new backend tpl delivering output, including your current style.css rules so far.

[yellowled]

And, it istill unfinished!

I get that. I also get that you wanted to deliver a “full” UI/UX here which would “fit” anywhere, but that's just what's not going to work well with the new backend. I'm not saying that's “your fault” or something, it just makes it hard to even get started here.

It is not cleaned up at all, so files can be redundant by now or even be dropped at all and the css is surely a big mess and really needs a clean-up! The markup for the block_*.tpls could be rewritten and cleaned up slowly without breaking things, if keeping the structure and the function nodes.

Given the fact that I tried to build the new/2k11 backend CSS to “cover the basics” and provide some helper classes, I guess that would be pretty easy by just skipping the 1.6 CSS for the dashboard altogether, analyzing how that works and then adding some stuff that's needed from the 1.6 CSS.

In terms of markup, there's a lot of stuff which works, but isn't really properly used. E.g. you can not have a header element inside a div (header needs a parent which is a sectioning element, div isn't), you've used section where they are not appropriate etc. It's no biggie since it does work, but I would want to change it anyway. Sorry, I'm anal about markup.

I'm also not sure it needs all the JS eye-candy/effects it has right now. Sure, dashboard elements should be movable by drag 'n' drop, but I'm not so sure about some of the other JS stuff.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of it all. Let me mull over this for a couple of days, maybe it's way easier than I thought at first glance.

YL

[Timbalu]

Fine for me! ... Even the header/section tag change (would need to change the css if there is any in these cases)

[yellowled]

Even the header/section tag change (would need to change the css if there is any in these cases)

Let's tackle this pull request by pull request. I just went over the markup in general (still lots of room for improvement in my humble opinion, but a good starting point). I think one JS show/hide thing broke, but that should be it.

Please check this out and if this works for you, I'll “dig deeper” in the next step.

YL

[Don Chambers]

Are we done with our group calls,or have I just missed the last few?

[yellowled]

Are we done with our group calls,or have I just missed the last few?

There haven't been any. You know, holidays and stuff.

YL

[onli]

I just met with YL in mumble for a mini-meeting to talk about the work we want to do next. We want to do a big devsprint with all interested soon, but at the moment that would be kind of uninteresting, because we are now just at the point where the 2.0-backend is almost fully functional again. So not that much to discuss we didn't discuss already.

But this also means that for every developer, now is a good time to install 2.0 and play a bit with it. If someone wants to help develop, we have some areas I would happily give someone to work on (new JS-hook for plugins, remove no-smarty-fallbacks from the core, UTF-8 the translation) or help implement ideas you yourself have.