On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Jun 29, 2012, at 4:57 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > >> On Jun 29, 2012, at 3:32 PM, Guillaume Lerouge wrote: > >> > >>> Hi Caty, > >>> > >>> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>> > >>>> > >>>> On Jun 29, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> Hi, > >>>>> > >>>>> I have received numerous complains that simple users have problems in > >>>>> editing the content and title of the Welcome block ("Welcome to you > wiki" > >>>>> gadget) from the homepage. > >>>>> There are multiple factors that influence the editing of that > particular > >>>>> gadget and that make the job especially harder for beginners. > >>>>> > >>>>> One of these factors is that the gadget used to display the Welcome > >>>> content > >>>>> is an "include" gadget. Without some custom actions for the gadget > that > >>>>> would let the user navigate to the included page or without some > >>>>> auto-redirect mechanism, the simple users have difficulties in > >>>>> understanding where the welcome content is coming from and what > actions > >>>>> they need to do in order to edit that content. > >>>>> Also the "include" macro has a lot of advanced properties that can be > >>>> scary > >>>>> and confusing for users (context, reference, section, type, etc.). > >>>>> > >>>>> My proposal is to create a new "text" gadget. This gadget will be > >>>> very-very > >>>>> simple and will contain just the gadget's title and the gadget's > content. > >>>>> Its only purpose will be to let users add textual information inside > a > >>>>> dashboard. > >>>>> > >>>> > http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Improvements/EditingWelcomeMessage#HProposal > >>>> > >>> > >>> I was thinking about the exact same idea after doing a demo yesterday > :-) > >>> > >>> > >>>>> Right now we have specialized gadgets for HTML content, velocity > content, > >>>>> code in general, boxes, success messages, etc. but no way to put > just a > >>>>> simple text inside the dashboard. > >>>> > >>>> Indeed when editing the dashboard we should be able to not use a > gadget > >>>> and instead type directly the content in wysiwyg mode. > >>>> > >>>> I don't think we should have a "text" macro though. > >>>> > >>> > >>> It's the fastest way to solve the issue at hand, with the lowest > overhead. > >>> Caty, you could even offer it right away as an extension on > >>> extensions.xwiki.org , you simply need to create a wiki macro. We > could > >>> call it "gadget text" if that makes you feel better. > >>> > >>> One idea is that the Add gadget button should open a custom Gadget > dialog > >>>> box that allows to specify the title and for the content it should > display > >>>> the WYSIWYG editor, thus allowing to insert macros like for any > content. > >>>> > >>> > >>> This means changing the existing dashboard architecture which is going > to > >>> take ages, with nobody assigned to it right now. Caty's solution is > both > >>> faster and simpler. > >>> > >>> I'm +1! > >> > >> IMO the strategy should always be the same (whatever the topic): > >> 1) Agree about where we want to go > >> 2) Decide how to get there > >> 3) Possibly decide about creating temporary technical debt because 1) > would take too long and the feature/issue is needed quickly > >> > >> What's wrong is to jump to 3) without thinking about 1) because: > >> * you may be making incompatible choices > >> * it's very very difficult to remove something > >> * 1) might not be that hard > >> > >> Also having that macro on e.x.o is not going to help at all. No users > is going to look for it and install it before editing his/her dashboard. > >> > >> IMO what's not nice is how we hijacked the Macro editor. It makes it > unnecessarily complex for the user. > >> > >> If instead we present the user with the standard WYSIWYG editor and the > same ability as he already knows about to add content it'll be much more > effective. > >> > > > >> It shouldn't be complex since we already have all the pieces. Since > I've not been close to this code I'm curious to get feedback from Anca and > Marius about the idea and the time it would take to achieve it. > > > > Most of the time the user wants to add a gadget to the dashboard, not > > to create one. > > Indeed, good point. > > It's not the case here but it's probably the major use case, even though > we don't yet have any real gadget to use… Macros are not really Gadgets. > Macros are reusable building blocks while gadgets are supposed to do > something specific display stuff nicely,etc. We have a few macros that can > act as gadgets like the {{document}} macro or {{activity}} for ex. > > We discussed in the past having a "Gadget" content type but we didn't > conclude and it's a bit awkward. > > The problem right now is that users get to see all macros that exist, even > complex and technical ones rather than see upfront a selected list of nice > macro/gadget to use for a dashboard. > > > And 'add' implies selecting a gadget from a list. I'm > > not sure that displaying a WYSIWYG editor (rich text area) when > > clicking the "Add Gadget" will make things more clear. The user will > > probably ask herself "What now?". Is she going to know that a 'gadget' > > is a macro? > > Yes you're right. This is more a use case for creating a new widget. > > BTW right now we cannot edit a gadget that doesn't use a macro as its top > content. You get an error popup when you try this, telling you to use the > object editor. At some point it would be nice to fix this. > > > Keeping the list of gadgets and having a special one whose > > content is editable with the WYSIWYG editor seems to me as the best > > solution. Now, displaying the WYSIWYG editor for the content of this > > special gadget might require some hacks. > > Yes. It's the same topic as the "macro-specific editor" topic, which is a > complex one. > > Just got an idea. What I didn't like was to have a {{text}} macro that has > no meaning when used outside of the dashboard but I think we can reconcile > the best of both worlds since there's a macro we've been wanting to have > for some time to allow to write markup in any markup language. > > So we could call it {{content}} and it could have an optional parameter > called "syntax" to specify the syntax of its content; if not specified it > would default to the syntax of the current doc in which it is put. > > So full form would be {{content syntax="xwiki/2.1"}}….{{/content}}. > It would do the trick but the initial proposal includes a "title", which wouldn't fit here AFAICT. JV. _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
