Hi Jacques,
On 30/11/2016 08:51, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
Hi Julien,
Just few questions inline
Le 29/11/2016 à 23:35, Julien NICOLAS a écrit :
Hi Sharan, everyone,
It was idea like seed that start to grow up in my mind since I start
with OFBiz. Today, after several try on the project I think the
community is very closed to find the best way to improve the UI.
The first sharing was with Gil and Nicolas, then we decide to submit
a talk about that. The big surprise was that Taher have the quite
same ideas than us !!!
There are many things that must be done to have a good UI.
- All the UI could be managed by the theme without modifying the
framework.
- Each screen must be linked to a screen structure.
What would be this screen structure? You don't need to develop much at
this stage, just that I can't vision what it would be.
This structure is to follow the a UI standard that can be managed by the
theme. For example, the find screen can be define as :
- A research field area
- A result area
If all the find screen could be linked to this structure, it will be
easier for theme to manage it's own template of search screen.
It will be included in the main decorator that will also linked to a
structure, so theme can manage to change the template. And when you
change the theme, it could be a completely different look and feel :)
I hope I explain well my thought.
- We need a UI standard that the developer need to follow for screen
creation.
- We must have a common theme (remove all theming stuff from the
framework)
- It could be interesting to have a new component to improve / test
a new theme
- We have to create at least a new theme without limits ! Be crazy !
It's a long term project, but it must be our concern, all the people
that want a beautiful and UX UI must be involved \o/ I remember when
I start bootstrap topics, that we were many ;)
This project is more ambitious, a long term one that will improve the
theming automatism to provide to the webdesigner an unlimited tool
and, in the same time, an easy to maintain framework for us ;)
Why we need a new component to test new theme ?
When I start working with OFBiz, I was so surprised that the UI is
too heavy. Then I was thinking that I have to improve the UI to
provide a best one. After several try I understand that the actual UI
is not a final user interface. It is a developer one. It's a
developer UI because it contain all the features developed. But
definitively, we can't provide this kind of UI to final users, we
have to simplify it. In the same times, we can't delete the current
UI because developers need to improve it with new features that will
help us to deploy new features to our final users.
For this new component, we can implement an existing component but
simplified and ready for the new theme(s).
You mean we could take and existing component, say example for
instance, and would simply it at the UI level. I picked example
because it's already rather simple and contains demonstration of
features.
No, I mean to define a component (party, product, facility, etc.) that
we start to re-implement (using the existing services) but in a more
simple way (without all the features, selecting only the main ones).
In conclusion, if the new component dedicated for test a new theme
match to the community needs, Taher think to a super simplified
developer user interface that facilitate developers to improve the
software. A new interface without any constraint that allow
developers to develop easily new features.
Another thing I can't vision at this stage, no hurry, I guess I'll
later :)
Yes, too many thing to explain, I have to add details about this point,
I'll do it soon ^^
All the rest is OK with me, or at least I think I did grab the ideas
Thanks!
Jacques
What about the new theme ?
A new theme, maybe more than one theme. It could be crazy but if we
need to be sure that we can do anything we want and that the screen
structure allow webdesigner to do whatever we want, we can imagine 2
new themes exactly different in structure :)
I have at least an idea, just for the look and feel. I can share it
and we can improve it all together (or just scrap it and start with a
new idea ^^). In the same times, at the Apache Con we meet Victoria
Bondarchuk
<http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/apachecon-europe/program/schedule>
(work in UX project management) that want to help us in this task,
and Darshan Kumar (work also in UX) who want to join the OFBiz
project starting on that task.
How to start ?
I propose to start by creating a main Jira about Improve the UI
(maybe this one already exist since a long long time ago ^^) and then
link all the subtasks to this main one. Maybe we can start a topic by
subtask to share with the community.
Before creating anything it could be interesting to have opinion of
all people who want UI changes. All the community I think, so I hope
server will not be down because of the OFBiz community involving ^^
I hope Paul, Gaurav and all the people that try or already improve
the UI will help on this task \o/
I want to be an actor of this changes and I hope you want it too !
Thanks for all your help in advance.
Julien.
On 28/11/2016 11:28, Sharan Foga wrote:
Hi Everyone
Another one of the topics that came up during the brainstorming in
Seville was around the UI. In fact we had at least 2 presentations
from the OFBiz track at Apachecon that were about how we could
improve our UI.
If the UI was the main focus - what could the strategy look like
- User Interface - have 2 versions of the UI, one very clean and
simple, the other more advanced. (Our current UI could be the
advanced one....?
- Separate the web part from the widgets
- We have too many fields on one screen (many of them are not
mandatory and are just included as optional). What if we slimmed
down all the screens to have a sensible default UI for users. The UI
could also be modifiable by service providers. Simplify the screens
with defaults
- Use Bootstrap / CSS / Angular
- Isolate web related
- Define a graphics charter to be used for the screens
- Have a CSS convention
- Remove web from the framework - it shouldn't be there
What do people think?
-Do people think it would be a good idea to have 2 versions of the
UI? (a simple one and a more advanced one?)
- Are these the things we would need to focus on or have in place if
we wanted to focus on the UI?
(Also I know Nicolas has mentioned that he has already started work
on a Proof of Concept for a common theme - so do we need to make
sure we agree conventions etc before much more work is done?)
Thanks
Sharan
