David,
I agree that there are some cool Ajax like features that won't map
exactly to existing widgets. In that case we'll create a new widget and
try to find an HTML equivalent. So, I'm not tossing out the idea of new
widgets that have improved features, I'm suggesting let's start with
adding new features to existing widgets.
I have seen the Ajax work done in the Example component.
Regarding the alternate HTML rendering classes, I don't think those will
be needed. My thinking right now is to just evolve the existing HTML
rendering classes.
-Adrian
David E Jones wrote:
Adrian,
This sounds great for the elements that have some sort of natural
JS/AJAX extension that doesn't change what the form means or offers to
the user but instead just improves the user experience and/or efficiency.
With cases like I agree it would be great, and a REALLY cool feature, to
upgrade automatically and not require form changes or anything.
However, there are many cases where we can't automatically add JS/AJAX
extensions, but instead they represent a possible widget that is
different enough from the concept behind any of the existing form field
types that it would be weird to piggy back the functionality and try to
automatically shoe-horn it into the existing functionality.
Some of the stuff I played with recently and added, like an auto-refresh
on a screen container, is not something we would want to automatically
turn on. The other one I added recently, to submit a form in the
background and not refresh the page, is also something that I don't
think we would want to automatically turn on.
So, yes, I agree we should add some of the automatic extensions that we
can and it would be a really cool set of new features.
Stepping back to the original thingy, how does using alternate
HtmlFormRenderer classes help with this? Maybe you're not still
considering that, but I'd say if we did default fancy things (which
again, I love the idea of), we should just do those all the time unless,
like you wrote, the browser identifier is clearly one that won't support
it (some of that might need to be client side too though... I'm not sure
about all of the nuances there).
-David
On May 6, 2008, at 3:42 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
I'm resurrecting this thread because I've spent some time looking into
the whole third party rendering library support idea and I think I
have a simple solution.
I thought about David's suggestion of having new widgets that are
effects based. I don't think that will be a good strategy because not
all browsers will have javascript enabled - which would render those
widgets useless.
A better approach I would like to propose is to use the Prototype
javascript library in combination with EXISTING widgets to improve
their response and functionality. The widget rendering code would
detect if the browser supports javascript, and output the correct HTML
to accommodate the browser.
Instead of a "live-form" widget, the existing form widget would detect
browser support, and render an improved form if the browser supports
it. The current paginated tables would use Ajax calls to scroll
through pages instead of refreshing the whole screen.
Basically, I'd like to see the cool effects and improved response
implemented without any additional work on the widget XML files.
What do you think?
-Adrian
David E Jones wrote:
I guess this is a continuation of the discussion in the thread
"uilabels and screenlet widget", and is related somewhat to part of
the stuff in issue OFBIZ-1648.
The general goal of the widgets is simple: no platform specific
artifacts. Unfortunately this isn't entirely possible, which is why
we have a very big and ugly "platform-specific" tag to delineate
things that are not generic and provide for the possible of having
alternative platform things specified together so that when rendering
for a different target the appropriate option can be selected.
As far as that applies to this topic, I'd say the best approach is to
never have any element or attribute called "dojo" or "ajax" or "rico"
or anything. In the dojo attribute for the container elements, I'm
not sure what you'd propose to put in it, ie the "some Dojo data",
but in general I'd prefer to never have anything that is so dependent
on a particular underlying technology, the widget artifacts gain
efficiency by their focus on different effects, with the underlying
software taking care of the "causes", or rather how the effects are
brought about.
In other words while we wouldn't want elements that have anything to
do with "dojo" or "openrico" we would want elements to describe the
effects from those libraries we'd like to have available through the
widget, and the most appropriate is probably the Form Widget with
different form and field types (though some would certainly go
elsewhere and are not form related).
Examples of that would be a new form type like "live-grid" or a new
form field type like "live-combobox" (or "dynamic-combobox" or
"server-side-combobox" or something). If we add elements like that
then it doesn't matter which AJAX library we use underneath and
generate HTML/etc for, and we can change libraries without requiring
any change to the higher level artifacts, like the form definitions.
-David
On Feb 16, 2008, at 1:34 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
In order to accommodate 3rd party rendering libraries (Ajax, Dojo,
etc) in the screen widgets, we need to discuss how that support will
appear in the screen widget XML files.
I'll start things off with a suggestion I made in another thread.
Everyone is welcome to join in and offer their ideas. When we reach
an agreement, we can submit the results to Jira and begin building
it out.
I was thinking we could simply extend the existing widgets with
additional attributes. The new attributes would pass 3rd party
specific data to the rendering classes. The new attributes are
ignored by rendering classes that don't need them. All rendering
classes render all widgets in some form - some rendering classes
might have additional bells and whistles based upon the additional
attributes, while others downgrade gracefully and still provide a
usable screen rendering.
So, the widget XML would look something like this:
<container id="some-id" style="some-style" dojo="some Dojo data"
ajax="some Ajax data" foo="some foo data">
...
</container>
The additional attributes could be applied to any screen widget
element, not just the container element.
The advantage I see to this approach is it is fully backwards
compatible. We can add attributes to any screen widget element
without breaking existing rendering code.
That's it. Like I said, please add your ideas.
-Adrian
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