I agree. One of the things I've tried to do to help that along is by
writing the Best Practices on the Wiki site. But a more design-oriented
approach would help too. From my perspective, the Best Practices
basically say "you should do it this way", and in the design-oriented
pages you can learn more about WHY you should do it that way.
I like the idea of working with the current community to get a consensus
on these things and then loosely enforcing them. I keep holding out hope
that the desire to produce a quality product will increase.
I understand your viewpoint of just starting over with new code and new
community members. At first glance that seems attractive. But it seems
to me that's like curing cancer by executing the patient.
-Adrian
On 4/26/2011 12:16 PM, David E Jones wrote:
Yes, that's true. That goes back to one of the big difficulties with something like OFBiz
managed in the "Apache way". OFBiz isn't a project driven by specifications,
and so many decisions are made in a more ad-hoc manner.
If we were to step back and make OFBiz spec-driven by actually writing up
requirements and then creating designs (specs) based on the requirements, and
then implementing to those, and testing against them.
That sort of effort could happen right now by collaborating on documents that
represent requirements, and then on documents that represent designs. Those
would be separate from the project for (probably) quite a while, so wouldn't
interfere with current happenings.
-David
On Apr 26, 2011, at 12:03 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
I agree with you on the unnecessary complication of common or shared artifacts.
I have been ranting for years about the Global Decorator being filled with a
lot of things that don't belong there, but nothing changes - people keep
dumping more stuff in there. So the problem is caused by more than a lack of
discussion in the design phase, it's also caused by a lack of care after the
design.
-Adrian
On 4/26/2011 9:52 AM, David E Jones wrote:
And yes, not every idea is a good one and many things really don't belong in
the framework. Putting things in themes instead of the framework is a good idea
for many things. And on the topic of themes, it would be nice (and reduce the
incredible amount of redundancy in themes) if the themes were limited to visual
artifacts such as images and style sheets, instead of also including various
templates. Take these hugely redundant theme templates (especially for header)
and combine that with the practice of parameterizing every little thing... and
you have an error-prone tangle that makes customization difficult and
discourages innovation and improvement in the project.
Sorry for the rant, but this kind of thing has been going on for a long time
and is another reason why I still maintain that the ONLY way OFBiz will ever
have a clean framework separation, and even a clean framework, is if it is a
separate project maintained by a different group of people than maintains the
more business-oriented functionality of OFBiz.
-David
On Apr 26, 2011, at 4:37 AM, Scott Gray wrote:
I agree with Adrian, the style element alone already gives more that enough
control to theme designers.
Every web developer has (or should have) at least a basic understanding of css
and every time we step away from such a standard (like with additional
attributes in the widgets) we make OFBiz a little harder to use and maintain,
it's plenty hard enough already. Not every idea is a good idea and not every
good idea is really needed.
Regards
Scott
HotWax Media
http://www.hotwaxmedia.com
On 26/04/2011, at 8:37 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:
Main style sheet:
.button-bar ul a.create,.button-bar a.create {
padding:6px 10px 6px 10px;
}
Optional icons style sheet:
.button-bar ul a.create,.button-bar a.create {
background: url(../images/button_sprite.png) no-repeat 0px 0px;
padding:6px 10px 6px 30px;
}
No changes to markup needed. It is the same thing we do to switch rendering
from LTR to RTL.
-Adrian
On 4/25/2011 1:19 PM, Nicolas Malin wrote:
Your are against me ? My popularity increases :)
At this time :
Screen definition :
------------------------
<link target="EditExampleLayer" ... style="buttontext create"/>
Output html render :
---------------------------
<a class="buttontext create" id="FindExample_LF_1_link"
href="javascript:void(0);">Nouvel exemple</a>
Style theme definition :
------------------------------
style.css :
.button-bar ul a.create,.button-bar a.create {
background: url(../images/button_sprite.png) no-repeat 0px 0px;
padding:6px 10px 6px 30px;
}
My proposition, after your first remark :
Screen definition :
------------------------
<link target="EditExampleLayer" ... style="buttontext">
<icons name="add">
</link>
Or
<link target="EditExampleLayer" ... style="buttontext" icons="add">
Or
<link target="EditExampleLayer" ... style="buttontext" purpose="add">
Output html render :
---------------------------
<a class="buttontext add" ...>Nouvel exemple</a>
Style theme definition :
------------------------------
icons.css :
.button-bar ul a.add,.button-bar a.add {
background: url(../images/button_sprite.png) no-repeat 0px 0px;
padding:6px 10px 6px 30px;
}
What's changes ? What is broken? Your are against widgets controlling styling
but at this time all icons define by style attribute on elements to be used by
theme. I propose more fexibility to explain the element's purpose that will be
work by screen renderer and after by theme designer.
To continue update icons improvement :
<set field="iconsModeViewEnumId from-field="userPreferences.VT_ICONS_MODE_VIEW"/>
<!--If User whant to view icons-->
<set field="iconsStyleLocation" from-field="userPreferences.VT_ICONS_"
global="true"/><!--If User have preference on icons to use-->
<service service-name="getIconsVisualThemeResources"><!--return the css file to
use that contains icons definition-->
<field-map field-name="visualThemeId"/>
<field-map field-name="iconsModeViewEnumId"/>
</service>
Nicolas
Le 25/04/2011 14:25, Adrian Crum a écrit :
I'm against the idea of widgets controlling styling. Period. I am against
Nicolas or any other developer deciding which icons get used and where - that
is a decision that should be reserved for theme designers.
To summarize my view:
1. Icon display and the choice of icons should be left to the theme designer.
Therefore, icon references should be kept in stylesheets.
2. If a theme designer wants to give the user an option to use icons or not,
then the theme's templates can conditionally load a cascading stylesheet that
includes icons.
-Adrian
On 4/25/2011 5:14 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
On a second thought, we may use another technology than CSS and still have
styles, see for instance in POS: posstyles.xml. So yes,
styles add flexibility and independence.
At 1st glance, Adrian's proposition sounds better from flexibility POV. But, if
I have well understood, is still limited to icons or
not in the whole OFBiz (like Google bar) when Nicolas's allows to set it by
screens (why not even by form fields or menu entries?)
I think this is really an important point in UI and should be discussed by the
whole developers community, any other opinions,
suggestions?
Thanks
Jacques
From: "Adrian Crum"<adrian.c...@sandglass-software.com>
You can control icon display through user preferences without embedding the
icons in markup. A user setting can conditionally load
a stylesheet that references the icons.
I'm not against having new icons in the project. An expanded selection of icons
is a great tool for theme designers to use. But
their use should be determined by the theme designers - not by screen widgets.
The OFBiz community has worked hard over the past 4
years trying to get styling out of markup and into stylesheets. I will push
hard against any effort to reverse that.
-Adrian
On 4/25/2011 1:32 AM, Nicolas Malin wrote:
Adrian I understand your remark but I'm not completely in agreement with that.
Icons is at once of the most visual but also a help user. We could associated
directly to a themes but the reality is more
complex. If I take the GTK project, every user can define if he wants icons,
icons and text or only text independently of the
themes.
On issue OFBIZ-4259 I do an error to use icons through img because although
they are images, they are a more complex management.
I'm not for their exploitation only through css or style because although they
results from it. We limit their display rendering
on one technology et style don't allow user preference managment.
I propose to continue icons integration, add a new element in screen renderer
that indicates what icons use on menu and form
field. Thence following the user preference and then the themes we display
icons or not. Whether rendering css by then or
treatment with an image, it will be template renderer are made their work.
Nicolas
Le 25/04/2011 05:21, Ryan Foster a écrit :
I thought the original idea that Nicolas proposed, was for this to be
configurable by theme (adding a
layoutSettings.VT_ICONS_LOC to data config). I think that you should be able
to turn icons on and off as well as change the
icon library location.
Ryan L. Foster
801.671.0769
cont...@ryanlfoster.com
ryanlfoster.com
On Apr 24, 2011, at 6:29 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:
The main problem I have with this is the idea that theme design has been taken
away from the theme designer. In other words,
icons should be added by the theme designer - they should not appear in all
themes by default.
-Adrian
On 4/24/2011 5:26 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
It's actually related to https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-4259 and
r1095984
I did not see any issues in Flat Grey, could you post a screenshot?
If it's really blocking (I doubt we can't fix any related issues), it should be
easy to configure with a property in
widget.properties to bypass image rendering in menus (HtmlMenuRenderer.java
around line 500) and buttons
(MacroFormRenderer.java look for submitField.getImageLocation(context) or
maybe rather ModelFormField.java but this one
existed before, see http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1095984
for files changed)
Jacques
From: "Adrian Crum"<adrian.c...@sandglass-software.com>
I see that icons were added to menu items - maybe in rev 1088549. Is there a
chance we can revert that? Or at least make it
configurable on a per-theme basis? The new icons break the layout in the Flat
Gray theme. It would be helpful if a theme can
choose to use the icons or not use them.
-Adrian
