What would be really great to see happen with this is to use it as a case study for where AJAX elements would be useful.
Wherever AJAX elements would be useful we should first look for a way to extend the form or screen widgets to support that option. That would be the most ideal way to do it because then the work that goes into that AJAX element can be re-used elsewhere far more easily.
Using FTL files is the way to go if the widgets prove entirely too limiting, but I agree we should do everything we can to design an elegant extension to the widgets before going down that path.
This is a different circumstance than the ecommerce component where the intent is visually oriented customization. Even if customized a project management tool would likely have changes focused on business processes and not visual design, so widgets are definitely THE way to go as much as possible (it is way easier to change, maintain, and customize on a process level than FTL or other templates). We can still style things up and make it look very nice, but the priority is definitely on the business processes and data and the L&F is a decoration effort on top of that (for the majority of the screens anyway).
If I was choosing an approach for writing this and introducing AJAX I'd definitely go with the form widget. Adding AJAX elements (fields, form types, etc) to the existing widget framework will not be that much harder than implementing those things in plain FTL, and will be a hugely valuable addition to the project. The end result of the project management application in particular will also be far greater: less code, more flexibility, easier maintenance and customization (including making it look nice, though not pixel-perfect as is often the requirement for ecommerce customizations as described above).
-David On Nov 25, 2007, at 3:59 AM, Hans Bakker wrote:
Hi Jacopo, I completely agree with you. I need the projectmanager for my company use (have not yet found a customer for it). I saw that development stopped, registered myself in the new features document and started working......I looked for documents for the project manager, could not find any, so Icreated one with principles which are generally accepted with project managers. I used many and think a projectmanager combined withtimesheets is very useful. I was already wondering why all screens werein ftl....I am not opposed to ajax, but having all screens in ftl with no ajax yet (did not see any)...makes an application too difficult to maintain.....Add elements of ajax like such as a tree as I implemented for dataresource is the first task I want to do....So please Anil, give comments to my document, if possible please help, because without you starting the projectmanager application, i would never have continued it.... Regards, Hans On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 09:11 +0100, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:Yeah, having widgets *and* Ajax would be really great... By the way: does this mean that there are two current/independentdevelopment efforts going on in the same component (projectmgr) lead byAnil and Hans?If this is true, then it would be useful to spend some time in the dev list to discuss and unify the efforts instead of waiting for the commitlogs :-) Jacopo Hans Bakker wrote:Hi Anil,up to now the general policy was to use forms in the backend. I am notaware that that has been changed. Isn't better to find a a way to use AJAX the the forms? What do other people think about this? Regards, Hans Bakker. On Sat, 2007-11-24 at 22:31 -0800, Anil Patel wrote:Hans, Thanks a lot for your efforts in project module.I wanted to do UI in project component using ftl so Its possible to doAjax based UI goodies.If you really don't mind can you please NOT replace ftl files with formwidget. Regards Anil Patel--http://Antwebsystems.com : OFBiz Quality support for competitive rates.
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