> You are indeed, but the admin UI is still the center of it. (As for > the django website -- I would argue that's really a different matter > than developing django itself, and seems to deserve a separate > discussion.)
Well, our current "design czar" (Wilson) was tasked with the responsibility of the design for the Django website, so I assumed any new design czar or czars would be, as well. But perhaps not. I would say that *someone* needs to be in charge of that design, though, whether it's the same person or team that is handling the admin interface or not. > I'm guess I'm concerned about small matters that could > be addressed more or less immediately getting stalled while a > grandiose vision gets sorted out. Rethinking the admin UX would > certainly take some leadership, but it would also take considerable > buy-in from the devs and the community to actually fly, and take a > long time -- and in the meantime, we've got the admin we have now, > which regardless is going to need incremental improvement. Fair enough. I would certainly welcome incremental improvements to the existing admin, and I even have a few to suggest, but I don't think I'm passionate enough about that project to try to get too involved, myself. But certainly, it could use some attention, and I would think any "design czar" would be tasked with overseeing that process, as well. > Grappelli is in a crisis of its own because it breaks on django-trunk > rather badly; its devs are trying to decide whether they have to fork > the admin as a way forward, when really they would rather just skin > it. The admin right now can't be skinned in a stable way, which isn't > AFAICT because its design makes some assumptions that painfully > restrict how it can be skinned -- it is a matter of implementation > details: how the javascript is hard-coded, and that sort of thing. > (This hugely affects me personally, which is why I'm sticking my neck > out and writing about it.) Makes sense. Skinning the admin is also something that I'm not personally too invested in (I don't really have any need to skin it, and the existing "skin" doesn't offend my aesthetic sensibilities), but I agree that it *should* be architected to be easy to skin, nonetheless. My personal passion is more in the vein of making the admin interface more usable, more humane, more capable, and more extensible -- not more pretty. But, if someone else wanted to tackle making it more skinnable, I would be +1 for that, even though I don't need it (or want to work on it) myself. > Jeff, you've pointed out that having a design czar is more or less the > status quo, except that it hasn't worked in the long term. Actually, that's not what I said. I think our existing "design czar" (Wilson) worked out extremely well for Django until he became inactive. > I question > that in the future it would work in the long term any better. > Transferring ownership of the position when a czar gets busy with life > isn't going to be that straightforward. Finding a way for designers > to contribute without a czar being needed strikes me as a better > approach. If the admin were truly themeable, that would be the case; > the need for a singular czar goes away when you don't have a singular > design. You may be right that we don't need a "czar." I don't know where I stand on that, yet. But I disagree that if the admin were "themeable," all our design needs would be taken care of. Making it skinnable only allows people to enhance its aesthetics, and what I think is ultimately needed (in the long term) is a complete re-thinking of how the admin interface works, how applications can extend it for their needs, and how it can be more humane towards its users. None of this is solved by making it themeable (but again, I still think making it themeable is a good idea). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-develop...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
