Hello all, so, if I remember correctly, the navigation panel is just a call to the documentsTree macro. Unless otherwise specified, my remarks below are about the documentTree macro features.
On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 6:02 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea < mariusdumitru.flo...@xwiki.com> wrote: > Hi devs, > > Some users have complained that the navigation panel shows top level pages > that they don't need/want to navigate to, most importantly the XWiki page. > > There are multiple ways in which we can fix this. > > Solution 1: Content Page > > Create a top level "Content" page for user content and configure the > navigation panel to show the contents of this page. > > Pros: > * Namespace isolation (no conflicts between user pages and application > pages) > > Cons: > * The user may want to navigate to a top level application page (although > it's better to use the application panel for this instead) > * All the paths / references used to access the user content will start > with this "Content" page > The documentTree macro already has this feature, actually, to be able to start in a given root and I thought about this solution (manually implemented with a custom documentTree with a custom root). However, I think it's too restrictive (to force all content to be rooted in "Content") and in order to technically make it happen you'd need to change too many places of XWiki: the create, copy and move screens (when location is chosen) in order to make sure that user does not create content somewhere else. > > > Solution 2: Blacklisting > > Add support for specifying a list of (top level) pages to exclude from the > navigation panel. > Most of the usecases I had fall into this category, with blacklisting only at root level (if this makes it easier to implement or doesn't introduce perf. issues). So to me the pages to exclude would be a feature of the documentTree macro (which can also be used as a gadget on a dashboard). > > Pros: > * The user (top level) pages created later on will be visible in the > navigation panel > * The blacklist could be used to filter not only top level pages but also > any nested page from the navigation panel. > > Cons: > * The blacklist depends on the installed apps. The administrator may have > to update the blacklist when new applications are installed > Actually, this is a feature :) : any page (be it extension or user created content) is whitelisted until an administrator decides that it should not be in the tree. Note that it's the administrator that installs extensions on a wiki, and at least in theory it's not done every morning. For the management of the blacklists of the navigation panel (what navigation panel will pass to the documentTree macro), we can use an administration section, just like we do for what the applications panel displays by default :D. In addition, it would be consistent with what we already have! > * The blacklist depends on whether you view hidden pages or not. If you > don't view hidden pages then the blacklist probably contains 4 pages: Help, > Menu, Sandbox, XWiki (there is an application panel entry for each of them > except XWiki), which is manageable. If you view hidden pages then you need > to black list 28+ pages which is hard to manage and maintain. > The fact that you see too many pages when you activate hidden pages in your profile is a problem that is not specific to the tree, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the tree also shows too many things. To me, seeing hidden pages is not a "regular user in production" setting, it's mostly for setup / development phase. > * The filtering needs to happen on the database (otherwise we break the > pagination) so the database queries will become a bit more complex, which > could led to some performance penalty, depending on how long the blacklist > is. > > Solution 3: Whitelisting > > Add support for controlling the list of top level pages that are displayed > in the navigation panel. > this is the same principle as blacklisting (only "reversed"), and as far as I can project now, it already has a workaround: having multiple documentTree calls with the root parameter set and showroots to true. Also, the default create button of the wiki creates pages on the root of the wiki, next to "Main" and this would mean that the administrator would need to update the navigation panel any time a page is created, which is way more often than "any time an extension is installed". > > Pros: > * the whitelist doesn't depend on the installed extensions or hidden pages > so it's easier to maintain. > * the whitelist can be used to order the top level pages visible in the > navigation panel. > * the whitelist can be used to show at the top level (for navigation > purpose) a page that is not really a top level page > * No performance penalty > > Cons: > * The user (top level) pages created later on will not be visible in the > navigation panel. The administrator will have to add them to the whitelist > if they are useful for the navigation. Although creating top level pages > should happen less often than creating nested pages under the existing top > level pages. > err, how? The create button displayed on the homepage - the only create button that you see when you start on an empty wiki - creates top level pages! (there's actually a bug in 9.11.3, I explicitly changed the location to the "Home" page, and it still created a toplevel page). Indeed, if the administrator has an idea about what would be put on the wiki, he can create the toplevel pages, but 1/ it's not always the case, 2/ he might not want to, leaving users to organise their content as they wish. > * the whitelist controls only the first level in the tree. The next levels > will be dynamic (database queries) and with the default order. > > > Solution 4: Exclude extension pages > Exclude from the navigation panel the top level pages that belong to an > installed extension, allowing the administrator to make some exceptions > (e.g. keep the home page). The rationale is that if an installed extension > has a top level page then that page is most probably the application home > page which should be accessible from the application panel. This can be > implemented on top of solution 3 (the whitelist is basically dynamic: we > collect the top level pages that don't belong to an extension). > This is _very_ close to the cases I had, but the difference between "exactly" and "very close" is relevant, to me: obviously, some XWiki, Sandbox and other standard content needed to be removed, but also a custom page that I had created and manually put in the application panel. So, in my opinion, the work to do this is comparable to the work for implementing explicit blacklisted roots, so between this and 2, I choose 2. Long story short: I believe, as Vincent said, that we need to have the generic whitelist / blacklist parameters for the documentTree macro, in order to cover the maximum cases possible, and in my opinion, they all exist, because there is a great diversity in what users can do on the wiki but also in how they interpret some things: some people see applications as "special", some others don't, etc. For the navigation panel default blacklist we can make some dynamic computing of the parameters we pass to the documentTree call, e.g. all extensions, or some configuration in administration. As a priority choice between blacklist and whitelist, I would choose blacklist, as some sort of whitelist already exists, even if not fully complete and anyway it covers less "user content" cases than the blacklist one. Thanks, Anca > > Pros: > * It does a clear separation between applications (accessible from the > application panel) and content (accessible from the navigation panel). The > navigation panel is currently mixing application pages and (user) content > pages. > * The administrator doesn't need to update the navigation panel > configuration to exclude a top level application home page each time an > application is installed > * The hidden top level extension code pages are not shown even when "show > hidden pages" is set to true > * The user top level pages created later on appear in the tree > automatically > > Cons: > * The user won't be able to navigate easily to an application home page: > ** if the application panel is not shown > ** or if the application doesn't provide an application panel entry > ** or if the administrator has removed the entry from the application panel > > I prefer solution 4. > > WDYT? > > Thanks, > Marius >
