On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 11:38:09AM -0500, Ian Clarke wrote: > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Christian Funder Sommerlund < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > IMHO it still boils down to actually implementing a theming engine (which > > has been discussed a couple of times earlier) so that it is actually > > possible to easily change the interface... > > > > The core problem is that we've basically rolled our own (rather crappy) Java > web framework, which is ridiculous when you consider the amount of effort > that goes into web frameworks like Wicket, GWT, Play, and many others. Of > course, reinventing the wheel is nothing new for Freenet :-/ >
Heh! I'd put that in perspective: back then the idea was to make "a quick hack" so that Toad wouldn't have to learn a new framework. > The solution, as I've advocated many times, is to switch to an existing web > framework, and I favor GWT. Yes this entails a full redesign, but I think > this is necessary anyway. The current UI is way too developer-centric. Its > basically been designed from the back-end forward, rather than the right way > to do UIs which is from the user backwards. > I don't want to go on the specifics of GWT but I'd like to make the point that it's not a new framework that we need, it's designers... I've seen people making ugly and non-accessible web interfaces with ALL the major frameworks out there. IMHO the current problem is not a framework problem. In any software project specification involving a GUI, there's a phase where people specify WHAT they want to see on the interface and WHERE it should be. It's usually done with mockups all the parties involved comment on. This is what we should do/agree on first. It doesn't require a framework or anything. People contributing to it can do so the way they feel like (writing text, sending pictures, ...). THEN, it's up to the developpers to chose the appropriate tool to do the job. I do agree that the current web-framework we use has its limitations... but I don't think that switching to something else would be worth it. It would be a massive job and I think that the development time would be better invested elsewhere. I am convinced that whichever UI we agree on, it can be implemented regardless of the framework ... and that choosing a framework is up to the guy implementing it! Florent _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list [email protected] http://freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
