On 17 Feb 2009, at 13:45, Patrick Antivackis wrote:
Hi Jan,
I have quite good skills in Jquery and the way futon is using it.
I think your proposal is promising, and should even go a step
further with
may be a specific CouchDB base dedicated to plugins. The
installation of new
plugin would then be easy. As jquery can charge and execute script
on the
fly, scripts and html/images needed by the plugin could be
attachement of a
document.
A view could classify the plugin available (need a to define a
format for
the documents) based on the documents (plugin) stored in this base.
Also configuration could go to a specific document, letting easily
the user
to choose his home page for example, or the plugins available on it's
homepage.
Hi Patrick, this sounds all pretty good. I'm thinking that today's
base features
could be pluginized as well, the replication tab makes another good
candidate.
But: We need to be careful with requiring a fully working CouchDB
instance.
Futon will work if CouchDB launches the HTTP interface as it just
sends files
to the browser. The test suite can verify (or not) that the
installation works. If
it doesn't CouchDB is unusable, hence dynamic plugins would be unusable,
if the test suite were a plugin, we couldn't find the error.
Cheers
Jan
--
Just some thoughs
Regards
2009/2/17 Andrea Schiavini <[email protected]>
Futon is awesome. It is often the first thing our users see of
CouchDB
and
the
feedback is unanimously positive. *Futon is slick, it is simple,
it is to
the
point and it does all (well most) you need.*
Yep, this is why I love it :)
index.html: A portal page. At the moment, the first thing you see in
Futon
is
the list of databases. I'd like to see (as an replacement or an
addition
needs
to be discussed), a "welcome" page, a portal if you will, that
will show
the
first time user a little more information about where he is and
what he
can
do.
Something like?
1.) Validate Your Installation [link to the test suite]
(if it fails, look at [link to troubleshooting wiki page]).
2.) Learn CouchDB [link to the docs].
3.) Use CouchDB [link to list of DBs].
This sounds good, but what if I want just to check my databases
status? The
main use of Futon - as a developer - is to see docs, see why
something has
gone wrong, and so on. The "cool home page" can be good and useful
for
first-time users, but boring for the developer: he has to click on
a link
to
get to the databases. So, IMHO, there should be an option to
"disable" the
new home page.
News Feed. The Futon home page should display an RSS/Atom feed
containing
latest news items for CouchDB, like announcements of new versions,
or
security
issues and the like. Whether this should be an opt-in or opt-out
thing,
needs to be
decided, I can see reasons for both, but I think users should be
able to
disable
it, again runtime config to the rescue.
Are you sure it should go into Futon? Or better: what should Futon
be, in
your opinion? I'd rather prefer it to remain a sort of "control
panel" for
my databases. I prefer to fire up a newsreader or gmail to see
announcements.
List of installed apps. With CouchApps shaping up, Futon could
show a
list
of
installed applications alongside created databases. The way to
detect
CouchApps
is not yet defined, though there are sensible proposals.
Yes, this is good. I'd make this sort of a "tab" though: welcome
page,
databases, installed apps. With an option on the welcome page like
"Default
page:" and a dropdown with welcome page, installed apps, databases.
Maybe
also news, if you really want to.
More pluggable architecture. Hey, it might even be easy to add new
pages
to
Futon already, but I'm sure we can im prove that. The idea is that
users
can
write add-ons to Futon that are not of interest for all users but
only
those who
use CouchDB for a specific purpose (see next item). Futon then
wouldn't
have to
include all features for everybody but we'd have a repository of
Futon
plugins
that people can install. The repository of plugins should be a
CouchDB
database
that users can just replicate the plugins they like from.
Mmm I think this would mess up the slick interface of Futon too
much. I
dont
want it to be a sort of Facebook, it's Futon, I use it to manage my
databases and it does its work well.
--
Cluster management plugin. CouchDB will be deployed in clusters of
CouchDB
nodes. It'd be really cool if we had a Futon plugin that allows
you to do
all
sorts of neat things with that cluster. Like monitoring how it is
behaving
or
restructuring the cluster at runtime.
Agreed! Another tab maybe.
Cheers
Jan
--
Good post Jan. I like some of your ideas; however, I'd prefer Futon
to
remain a control panel instead of becoming something like
"MyCouchDB" or
"iCouch"...
Cheers!
Andrea Schiavini
