2011/11/29 Mihai Paun <[email protected]> > Hello Guillaume, > > First of all, thank you for your feedback. > > On Nov 28, 2011, at 1:31 PM, Guillaume Lerouge wrote: > > > Hi Mihai, > > > > I'm glad to see some work being done in this direction :-) > > > > Please see my comments below. > > > > On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Mihai Paun <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> Hello devs, > >> > >> As some of you may know, I recently took on the challenge of developing > a > >> mobile compatible version of XWiki Enterprise. The objective of this > >> development is to come up with an optimized solution for smartphone and > >> tablet users, both from a technological point of view (using HTML5, CSS3 > >> and perhaps mobile oriented JS libraries) and from a contextual > perspective > >> (when do mobile users use a wiki and most especially how they interact > with > >> it). > >> > > > > Regarding this, do you have a list of the main actions you expect mobile > > users to perform? For instance I'm not sure that many users will even > want > > to edit wiki pages (it's going to be really complex on a small screen and > > the WYSIWYG editor will not work). Adding a comment might be a more > > frequent use case for instance. > > Yes, we've created the mockups based on the assumption that the main > functionality will be reading content. Therefore, we have: > - Search button on the top right corner, position fixed, that will either > trigger a search form to show up or it will link to the search page > - Breadcrumbs, so that the user can navigate back through the wiki > - Icons of the most accessed spaces on the dashboard (first page that the > user will see after opening the wiki or after clicking on the home icon) > - Search form on the dashboard (as you see we rely heavily on search) > > Besides browsing for content, other actions will be: > - Creating documents, spaces > - Browsing/Adding comments > - Editing content: as I said in one of the notes from the mockups, the > performance of the WYSIWYG editor on mobile remains to be assessed and I'm > in favor of using only the text editor. Nevertheless, I'll have a > discussion with Marius and see how we can measure the performance. In any > case, it will be considered best effort within the first release timeframe. > For the record, I have yet to see a wysiwyg editor for mobile. There seems > to be one implemented in the Google Docs app for Android but couldn't find > it: http://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-WYSIWYG-editor-for-mobile-editing > - Browse attachments (Adding attachments is a bit tricky since the file > upload control is not included in the mobile web standards, but many > devices still accept it - Android from 2.2, iOS not even in 5.x) > - Login, register > - View user profile and perhaps edit it (also best effort) > - Browse a list of the other users (User Directory) > > > > > > The targeted platforms that I plan to support, since I'm only one guy > with > >> limited time, are post Android 2.2 and post iOs 4.x platforms. The first > >> release is planned for the end of January 2012. > >> > >> Because simply applying media queries to an existing desktop site won't > >> completely optimize a mobile experience, I thought of building one from > the > >> ground up - this would imply a complete overhaul coupled with > >> server/front-side adaptation (what Facebook, Google and most top > internet > >> brands are doing) > >> > >> Some of the key aspects that I plan to focus on are: functionality and > user > >> experience (establish what needs mobile users have in a wiki context), > >> performance, future-proofness (easily adaptable for the ever-changing > >> market of mobile devices, particularly in terms of screen size, > resolution > >> and browser changes), flexibility (easiness of adapting the skin to a > >> clients' needs) > >> > >> I am considering using an adapted version of mobile boilerplate, which > is a > >> very popular baseline template being used by a lot of individuals who > are > >> developing a mobile web app (http://html5boilerplate.com/mobile), and > >> build > >> on top of it a new yet familiar user-experience, adapted to mobile > context. > >> > >> In terms of functionality, my take is that the primary function of a > user > >> who is navigating a wiki is either looking for information (content) or > >> trying to edit information. Administration or using the wiki to build > >> structured applications falls under the use cases that the user won't be > >> interested in doing. Thus, in the proposed attached mockups there's no > >> schema for an Administration area or editing a document in object/class > >> mode. > >> > > > > +1 > > > > The advantage of starting from scratch will allow me to strip everything > >> that's unnecessary from the .vm files thus increasing performance; one > >> example would be reducing requests => saving bandwidth. > >> > >> Following a discussion with our designers, Caty and Max, we came up > with a > >> couple of mockups that I believe can stand as the foundation for this > >> mobile experience. Please find them here: > >> http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Improvements/MobileSkinv3or > >> here in a higher quality: http://db.tt/8vX9OcBZ > >> > >> Another approach, for which I also gave a lot of thought, is to make an > >> existing skin work passably well on a range of mobile devices by using > >> media-queries and adjusting a great deal of .vm's. This will offer an > >> "responsive design" experience, similar to the examples that can be > found > >> here: http://mediaqueri.es/ > >> > >> This approach has a lot of advocates and has gained quite an enthusiasm > >> lately (there's even a book written on the topic: > >> http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design). Note that > one > >> particularity of the websites is that most of them have been built with > a > >> "mobile first" (http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?933) approach in > mind, > >> not having to adapt an existing desktop website. Secondly, these are > mainly > >> presentation websites, far from the scope of our product. > >> > >> However, I've been pondering about this alternative a lot recently, and > I > >> am thinking about going back to the drawing board and make an analysis > of > >> what exactly would take to develop the mobile skin this way and also > have a > >> thorough look at the code to see if the current markup can be easily > >> adjusted to offer a responsive experience. My mainly concern is that > >> instead of coming up with something clean, things will become instead > >> messier, probably having to be forced to adopt varios unorthodox > techniques > >> or bad practices in the mobile web, such as using extra JS code to move > >> markup around. > >> > > > > Both approaches are interesting. I've seen several examples of responsive > > layouts lately and I must say that I was quite impressed by their > quality. > > One such example is the new version of the Boston Globe website: > > http://bostonglobe.com/ which adapts from large screens to phone > screens. > > Yes, I am also a big fan of this technique but unfortunately I don't find > it entirely suitable in our case. I highly recommend this short read on the > topic of how these "responsive" websites are created: > http://yiibu.com/about/site/ > > > > > The other advantage of this is that there is only 1 skin to maintain > > instead of several different ones, and new applications automatically > > benefit from the fluid design. A big question would be, what to do with > > livetables in that context? > > That's true. This is as much of an advantage as it is a disadvantage with > my first approach. The costs of maintaining another codebase is strictly > related to what we plan to do with the mobile skin when it will be ready. > Include it in the platform, use it as a selling point? > About the livetable, I consider it very valuable for filtering and sorting > documents, thus for searching and reading content. From the tests I've made > on my devices, on iOs 5 and Android 2.3.3, it behaves well but I cannot > find a way of introducing it in my mockups. > The problem with the livetable is that it's only suitable for screen sizes > larger than the one of an iPad. >
Hi, I believe it is very important to go further just wiki content of pages. We need to support what actually is in the content of pages (sheets, livetable and so). Otherwise I believe you will have most of your content not available in a good maner. However, this does not mean that the entry point of the mobile skin cannot be something specific to mobile (a dashboard and activity stream specifically made for mobile). But if you get to a page which has scripting or javascript in it , we need to find a way to make it work natively. Concerning the iPad mode, I think it would be worth it to really discuss if a specific mobile interface is needed. The screen real estate of an iPad is already quite good and we could imagine that a slightly modified skin could be enough (with panels hided by default for instance). Ludovic > > > > > I would definitely be interested in an exploration of this option > > (complexity, advantages, features to expose...) before we engage in a > > redesign using an external, mobile-only framework. > > To sum it up: > - It's very hard, if not impossible to adapt an existing website and make > it "responsive" (particularly in terms of modifying mark-up order) > - One codebase to maintain > - Less complex to develop since we're talking only about removing stuff > that is not suitable for mobile devices (e.g. Panels) > - We're not improving anything in terms of performance since we're > displaying:none a bunch of html elements which are loaded anyway; > performance is a crucial aspect for mobile devices. > > > > > Looking forward to the final product, > > I would like to get more feedback from the other devs. > > Thank you, > Mihai > > > > > Guillaume > > > > I am gladly accepting any kind of input on this. > >> > >> Thank you, > >> Mihai > >> _______________________________________________ > >> devs mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > devs mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > > _______________________________________________ > devs mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > -- Ludovic Dubost Founder and CEO Blog: http://blog.ludovic.org/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost GTalk: ldubost _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
