Interesting ?
Any chance of getting cvsweb up on the code???
>From the comments I've seen so far and from hacking away at the new version of
the framed admin interface (nicknamed v3).........
very early versions viewable on
http://www.hklc.com/dump/framedadmin_v3.jpg
http://www.hklc.com/dump/framedadmin_v3a.jpg
I have a half finnished spec on the new design, but I get very bored writing
it so I generally end up hacking the code.......
resizing boxes..... eg. textboxes to fit the screen..
- the original framed admin used cookies to store a series of values for box
sizes..
- This has been extended a bit on v3 by generating the frameset with
javascript, then adding these lines in
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1)
{
windowwidth= document.body.clientWidth;
windowheight= document.body.clientHeight;
}else{
windowwidth= window.innerWidth;
windowheight= window.innerHeight;
}
This then pumps varialbes into urls, on the frames -> then taken by the
cookies and stored to remember the window size...... - still testing it!!! -
but it seems OK.
Graphic Design on v3:
Having spent 1 evening pondering over the design of the current framed admin,
and playing about laying it out.. It became very clear that there was __Far__
too much information on the screen..... Basically a lay person would probably
just want to go in and use the DHTML editor, change a bit of text, and say
'OK' - the huge number of boxes and options (although usefull) did not seem to
help this..
To solve this, I have added extensive use of layers - this seems to work, but
I did get comments that there may be problems with chinese and netscape -
however, I have yet to experience any issues, or see any evidence of this.....
One of the issues that came up with the current framed admin was that you
could not attach a image to a new article or style etc. - this was because
when you are editing a new page, it does not have an id to attach to - so the
new system makes you create the article first, with a name, then you are
editing an article that exists.
The design layout has certian aspects taken from mozilla, basically as I'm too
lazy to come up with a better interface design.... - the colours of the
editing window (basically the yellow) will proably be changed to grey, in
keeping with the theme - along with new button designs...
Tree navigation on v3:
I spent quite a while getting a javascript tree working with the early version
of v3, This allowed navigation of the the tree without pulling pages from the
server. However, I found on small sites this was fast and efficient, but on a
large site (> 1000) pages it would hang the browser for about 1-2 minutes. In
the end, I ended up writing/hacking a new tree browser, that is used for all
the navigation. (it's in the tree.element.php and tree_function.element.php3
Coding design on v3:
take a look at
http://demo.hklc.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb/page/Framed%20Admin%201b1.page/rcs.page/
The code for beta1 (or v2) was a gentle manipulation of the original admin
site. This meant that it could be put together very quickly (give or take the
learning curve..).. however when it came to giving the code to some of our
other programmers, it was an up hill struggle to get to grips with the heavy
mixing of PHP an HTML layout.
It does seem that as a Content/Application Management System midgard is
encouraging the end users to seperate as much as possible the 'code' from the
'style' - however the basic admin system is a poor example of this.....
Basically v3 is a total ground up build of the admin site (eg. very little old
code remains)......
The RCS page now contains the Code (with a big C!) for the whole admin site -
The theory being that since all the elements in midgard a very similar, the
code to read and write them would also be similar... The only difference is
how this is displayed to the user.....
Other than this, the bit that is not visable is a modified FastTemplate php
library which reads from midgard styleelements rather than files. - this
should mean that translating the admin interface should just be a mater of
giving the files to a graphic designer or secretary?? and letting them type it
up....
After many hours of toil and strife, I got about 70% of the way into
implementing a CVS dual back end for midgard (eg. every write to the database
is mirrored as a write to CVS).. however When it came to 'moving or renaming'
an article the code became impossibly complex for a simple solution (basically
CVS does not support Rename!)
The outcome of this was to use the CVS tree, however write directly to it with
rcs... - Also devise a standard method of storing midgard elements etc. as
files. - this is a 'evolution' of the original import/export methods.
anyway, there is alot more to the new code, as I've been spending far too much
time hacking it...
Release dates... - now theres an idea? :)
regards
alan
--
Technical Director
Linux Center (HK) Ltd.
www.hklc.com
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