Re: Wicke website makeover time?
I think the very first priority now is to decide which Github repository should be the official one for this task. I think this should be Martijn's repository merged with all the changes made by Chris. I don't know if Martijn agrees with me. In this days he should be very busy with the three presentations he will hold at the incoming Apache Con in Budapest. So maybe he won't be able to reply very soon. PS: thank you for having revamped this topic :)! Sorry, for the confusion - I realize now that I was referring to Chris J Lee's fork of Martijn's work. I cloned Chris J Lee's fork and ran Jekyll on it and looks very modern and sexy indeed. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
I think the very first priority now is to decide which Github repository should be the official one for this task. I think this should be Martijn's repository merged with all the changes made by Chris. I agree: Chris J Lee's changes integrate Foundation which I have found to be an excellent framework to do all the responsive stuff and browser agnostic stuff. No one wants to be managing that stuff with their own home grown CSS these days and there is simply no need to when Grid/CSS frameworks like Foundation and Bootstrap making this a no brainer. I think we're also likely to have more people able to contribute to the maintenance of the site if it is using a defacto standard like Foundation or Bootstrap rather than a home grown CSS lib. PS: thank you for having revamped this topic :)! No worries - let's hope it happens this time around! Sorry, for the confusion - I realize now that I was referring to Chris J Lee's fork of Martijn's work. I cloned Chris J Lee's fork and ran Jekyll on it and looks very modern and sexy indeed. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Bootstrap would be too standard and anonymous and would ultimately be a ball and chain. A little .less and responsiveness can easily be achieved without going bootstrap. IMHO standard and anonymous looks a lot better than retro late 1990s ;) Having said that, there are plenty of Bootstrap customization tools (Bootswatch etc.,) that would allow us to customize very quickly and so move well away from the standard and anonymous Bootstrap look and feel - I would never use the standard Bootstrap template without customization - it's too generic these days. While we could go home grown i.e. without the help of Bootstrap and do a little .less (or .sass) and responsiveness the use of Bootstrap's already awesome (tried and tested and working) responsiveness and it's cross browser compatibility (who wants to deal with issues like that in 2014?) could make this a very quick project. I know I don't have a lot of time to spare to make greenfield, home grown responsiveness that works across IE7+, FF, Chrome and Safari. So a quick project is a good project for me. If it ends up looking a lot more modern and sexy than the current site and it takes hours instead of weeks then I think it's going to happen. If we insist on not using a grid/CSS/JS template like Bootstrap and so make the effort measured in weeks instead of hours then I fear that the website will still have it's current look and feel in a years time. I don't think we'll be locked into Bootstrap anyway. If the translator uses bootstrap then the copy can remain Bootstrap free and easily moved to another CSS/JS library later if required. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? Jekyll is fully customizable. It's just a translator from markdown to HTML with templates and includes. Martijn - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
Hi, Personnally, I really liked what Martijn did here: http://people.apache.org/~dashorst/wicket-flat/ It's clean and has personnality. The only thing IMHO is that a one page design for this amount of information is perhaps a bit too much. -- Guillaume On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Bootstrap would be too standard and anonymous and would ultimately be a ball and chain. A little .less and responsiveness can easily be achieved without going bootstrap. IMHO standard and anonymous looks a lot better than retro late 1990s ;) Having said that, there are plenty of Bootstrap customization tools (Bootswatch etc.,) that would allow us to customize very quickly and so move well away from the standard and anonymous Bootstrap look and feel - I would never use the standard Bootstrap template without customization - it's too generic these days. While we could go home grown i.e. without the help of Bootstrap and do a little .less (or .sass) and responsiveness the use of Bootstrap's already awesome (tried and tested and working) responsiveness and it's cross browser compatibility (who wants to deal with issues like that in 2014?) could make this a very quick project. I know I don't have a lot of time to spare to make greenfield, home grown responsiveness that works across IE7+, FF, Chrome and Safari. So a quick project is a good project for me. If it ends up looking a lot more modern and sexy than the current site and it takes hours instead of weeks then I think it's going to happen. If we insist on not using a grid/CSS/JS template like Bootstrap and so make the effort measured in weeks instead of hours then I fear that the website will still have it's current look and feel in a years time. I don't think we'll be locked into Bootstrap anyway. If the translator uses bootstrap then the copy can remain Bootstrap free and easily moved to another CSS/JS library later if required. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? Jekyll is fully customizable. It's just a translator from markdown to HTML with templates and includes. Martijn - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Yes, that looks very nice indeed. That's the sort of website I'd love my clients to see when I tell them I'm planning to build their 'next big thing' using Wicket. -Original Message- From: Guillaume Smet [mailto:guillaume.s...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 November 2014 11:50 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? Hi, Personnally, I really liked what Martijn did here: http://people.apache.org/~dashorst/wicket-flat/ It's clean and has personnality. The only thing IMHO is that a one page design for this amount of information is perhaps a bit too much. -- Guillaume On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Bootstrap would be too standard and anonymous and would ultimately be a ball and chain. A little .less and responsiveness can easily be achieved without going bootstrap. IMHO standard and anonymous looks a lot better than retro late 1990s ;) Having said that, there are plenty of Bootstrap customization tools (Bootswatch etc.,) that would allow us to customize very quickly and so move well away from the standard and anonymous Bootstrap look and feel - I would never use the standard Bootstrap template without customization - it's too generic these days. While we could go home grown i.e. without the help of Bootstrap and do a little .less (or .sass) and responsiveness the use of Bootstrap's already awesome (tried and tested and working) responsiveness and it's cross browser compatibility (who wants to deal with issues like that in 2014?) could make this a very quick project. I know I don't have a lot of time to spare to make greenfield, home grown responsiveness that works across IE7+, FF, Chrome and Safari. So a quick project is a good project for me. If it ends up looking a lot more modern and sexy than the current site and it takes hours instead of weeks then I think it's going to happen. If we insist on not using a grid/CSS/JS template like Bootstrap and so make the effort measured in weeks instead of hours then I fear that the website will still have it's current look and feel in a years time. I don't think we'll be locked into Bootstrap anyway. If the translator uses bootstrap then the copy can remain Bootstrap free and easily moved to another CSS/JS library later if required. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? Jekyll is fully customizable. It's just a translator from markdown to HTML with templates and includes. Martijn - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Hi Martijn, Did you build that page via jekyll or from raw HTML? I'm thinking we could easily restructure the current jekyll content to output in that layout/style. I'm playing around with a new type of layout called 'landing' (for landing page - eg., like the home page) where things are laid out like your sample. Regards, Chris -Original Message- From: Guillaume Smet [mailto:guillaume.s...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 November 2014 11:50 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? Hi, Personnally, I really liked what Martijn did here: http://people.apache.org/~dashorst/wicket-flat/ It's clean and has personnality. The only thing IMHO is that a one page design for this amount of information is perhaps a bit too much. -- Guillaume On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Bootstrap would be too standard and anonymous and would ultimately be a ball and chain. A little .less and responsiveness can easily be achieved without going bootstrap. IMHO standard and anonymous looks a lot better than retro late 1990s ;) Having said that, there are plenty of Bootstrap customization tools (Bootswatch etc.,) that would allow us to customize very quickly and so move well away from the standard and anonymous Bootstrap look and feel - I would never use the standard Bootstrap template without customization - it's too generic these days. While we could go home grown i.e. without the help of Bootstrap and do a little .less (or .sass) and responsiveness the use of Bootstrap's already awesome (tried and tested and working) responsiveness and it's cross browser compatibility (who wants to deal with issues like that in 2014?) could make this a very quick project. I know I don't have a lot of time to spare to make greenfield, home grown responsiveness that works across IE7+, FF, Chrome and Safari. So a quick project is a good project for me. If it ends up looking a lot more modern and sexy than the current site and it takes hours instead of weeks then I think it's going to happen. If we insist on not using a grid/CSS/JS template like Bootstrap and so make the effort measured in weeks instead of hours then I fear that the website will still have it's current look and feel in a years time. I don't think we'll be locked into Bootstrap anyway. If the translator uses bootstrap then the copy can remain Bootstrap free and easily moved to another CSS/JS library later if required. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? Jekyll is fully customizable. It's just a translator from markdown to HTML with templates and includes. Martijn - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
I think we haven't mentioned yet the nice work done by Chris J. Lee: https://github.com/chrisjlee/wicket-site This should be the last version of Martijn's initial work. Hi Martijn, Did you build that page via jekyll or from raw HTML? I'm thinking we could easily restructure the current jekyll content to output in that layout/style. I'm playing around with a new type of layout called 'landing' (for landing page - eg., like the home page) where things are laid out like your sample. Regards, Chris -Original Message- From: Guillaume Smet [mailto:guillaume.s...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, 14 November 2014 11:50 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? Hi, Personnally, I really liked what Martijn did here: http://people.apache.org/~dashorst/wicket-flat/ It's clean and has personnality. The only thing IMHO is that a one page design for this amount of information is perhaps a bit too much. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
One last useful reference is https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WICKET-3341. This is the official issue to discuss new site design. Personally I like very much https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12583195/wicket-flat-new-top.002.png which is a variation of the flat theme. I think we haven't mentioned yet the nice work done by Chris J. Lee: https://github.com/chrisjlee/wicket-site This should be the last version of Martijn's initial work. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Wow! Martijn has already done what I was suggesting we already do - except I was proposing Bootstrap but Martijn's work looks excellent with whatever CSS it's using. I didn't realize that there was such an active JIRA already covering this. So this worries me - why isn't Martijn's work live yet? If myself or others do work on it or any other new website content/styling will it also be left flapping in the wind? Most people would only want to contribute to a website makeover that has a high chance of being used. What is stopping Martijn's site being updated with the latest content updates from the latest directory in SVN and then released to the wild and what could we do to make that happen? There is some feedback in the JIRA but if the reason it hasn't gone live is that It's not quite perfect yet then we have a classic perfectionist's dilemma - not an uncommon disease amongst programmers ;) Really guys, Martijn's site looks a million bazillion times better than the current live site - with or without whatever issues people think it might have. I really think we should bite the bullet and do whatever minimal work is required to get Martijn's makeover to 'go live' and then work on other none showstopper issues over time after that. What if we agreed on an absolute bare minimum list of show stopper issues that absolutely MUST be resolved in order to take Martijn's work live and then we can distribute the work and get it done!? JIRA is probably the best place to compile this list and track progress (as separately assignable subtasks?) but here's one or two: The only major one I can think of is Apache's requirement that site source be in their SVN repo but Martijn's work is on github. I can think of two options for this (could be others): 1. Establish a Git-SVN bridge somewhere?? So that we can make contributions via our own Git clones from which an admin can cherrypick pull requests and then shoot these changes over the bridge to Apache's SVN repo. 2. Do a once off port to SVN and then use SVN from then on with perhaps SVN branching (obviously not as elegant as git branching) I do agree with comment in the emails that there is quite a lot of content on that single home page. I don't think this is a showstopper that needs to be fixed before 'go live' but rather something we could work on afterwards. I think we could create a few new Jekyll layouts: one for a landing page (home page) and others where distinctive page types are required - maybe the quickstart? Thoughts? Regards, Chris -Original Message- From: Andrea Del Bene [mailto:an.delb...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 15 November 2014 6:06 AM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? One last useful reference is https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WICKET-3341. This is the official issue to discuss new site design. Personally I like very much https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12583195/wicket-flat-ne w-top.002.png which is a variation of the flat theme. I think we haven't mentioned yet the nice work done by Chris J. Lee: https://github.com/chrisjlee/wicket-site This should be the last version of Martijn's initial work. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Sorry, for the confusion - I realize now that I was referring to Chris J Lee's fork of Martijn's work. I cloned Chris J Lee's fork and ran Jekyll on it and looks very modern and sexy indeed. -Original Message- From: Chris Colman [mailto:chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com] Sent: Saturday, 15 November 2014 8:02 AM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: RE: Wicke website makeover time? Wow! Martijn has already done what I was suggesting we already do - except I was proposing Bootstrap but Martijn's work looks excellent with whatever CSS it's using. I didn't realize that there was such an active JIRA already covering this. So this worries me - why isn't Martijn's work live yet? If myself or others do work on it or any other new website content/styling will it also be left flapping in the wind? Most people would only want to contribute to a website makeover that has a high chance of being used. What is stopping Martijn's site being updated with the latest content updates from the latest directory in SVN and then released to the wild and what could we do to make that happen? There is some feedback in the JIRA but if the reason it hasn't gone live is that It's not quite perfect yet then we have a classic perfectionist's dilemma - not an uncommon disease amongst programmers ;) Really guys, Martijn's site looks a million bazillion times better than the current live site - with or without whatever issues people think it might have. I really think we should bite the bullet and do whatever minimal work is required to get Martijn's makeover to 'go live' and then work on other none showstopper issues over time after that. What if we agreed on an absolute bare minimum list of show stopper issues that absolutely MUST be resolved in order to take Martijn's work live and then we can distribute the work and get it done!? JIRA is probably the best place to compile this list and track progress (as separately assignable subtasks?) but here's one or two: The only major one I can think of is Apache's requirement that site source be in their SVN repo but Martijn's work is on github. I can think of two options for this (could be others): 1. Establish a Git-SVN bridge somewhere?? So that we can make contributions via our own Git clones from which an admin can cherrypick pull requests and then shoot these changes over the bridge to Apache's SVN repo. 2. Do a once off port to SVN and then use SVN from then on with perhaps SVN branching (obviously not as elegant as git branching) I do agree with comment in the emails that there is quite a lot of content on that single home page. I don't think this is a showstopper that needs to be fixed before 'go live' but rather something we could work on afterwards. I think we could create a few new Jekyll layouts: one for a landing page (home page) and others where distinctive page types are required - maybe the quickstart? Thoughts? Regards, Chris -Original Message- From: Andrea Del Bene [mailto:an.delb...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 15 November 2014 6:06 AM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? One last useful reference is https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WICKET-3341. This is the official issue to discuss new site design. Personally I like very much https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12583195/wicket-flat-ne w-top.002.png which is a variation of the flat theme. I think we haven't mentioned yet the nice work done by Chris J. Lee: https://github.com/chrisjlee/wicket-site This should be the last version of Martijn's initial work. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don’t steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. /quote More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web pages: 1. Generated from any tool via XLST or anything? The code is hosted at https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/wicket/common/site/trunk. We use http://jekyllrb.com/ to generate static HTML files. It is simple and fast. 2. Served from a content management system? No. 3. Just static pages edited directly in HTML? Yes. 4. Served as a Wicket app? (would be awesome!) No. Apache Infrastructure team doesn't allow usage of dynamically generated stuff because this leads of the higher maintenance cost. I guess the answer to these determines the quickest way possible to a refurbished website if Wicketeers agree that is appropriate. Could we hook together a simple system that actually uses a very simple Wicket app itself to host the pages? Eg., provide page content in some wiki style text format and have a simple Wicket page class that interprets this and outputs formatted content? No. See above. Aside: We have actually built a content management system for editing/hosting websites using Wicket but it's proprietary and I don't think Apache would approve of an Apache site being served by a proprietary content management system so that's probably not an option. We don't mind hosting it if they didn't mind but I'm thinking that's not going to be approved. Regards, Chris
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
Several attempts at a refresh have been done but they all strand in two things: - time to actually do something with a design that is received enthusiastically - copywriting the website, especially the front page For example I tend to doodle in keynote for ideas of a new web site look and my latest thing is actually going back to our roots (at http://wicket.sourceforge.net/1.2): http://imgur.com/D74s1dj http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#0 http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#1 I think it looks awesome but lack currently the time to actually do something more with it other than have it in keynote. There are some hurdles to consider: - website technology (currently jekyll, but asciidoctor might be a better future candidate, especially for the reference guide) - svn pub sub, I guess there's git pub sub but am not sure if/how that works - how to publish the site (currently generate, svn commit, but if guide is part of our build (to enable live, compiling examples) how does that integrate in the site workflow... Martijn On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Martin Grigorov mgrigo...@apache.org wrote: Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don’t steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. /quote More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web pages: 1. Generated from any tool via XLST or anything? The code is hosted at https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/wicket/common/site/trunk. We use http://jekyllrb.com/ to generate static HTML files. It is simple and fast. 2. Served from a content management system? No. 3. Just static pages edited directly in HTML? Yes. 4. Served as a Wicket app? (would be awesome!) No. Apache Infrastructure team doesn't allow usage of dynamically generated stuff because this leads of the higher maintenance cost. I guess the answer to these determines the quickest way possible to a refurbished website if Wicketeers agree that is appropriate. Could we hook together a simple system that actually uses a very simple Wicket app itself to host the pages? Eg., provide page content in some wiki style text format and have a simple Wicket page class that interprets this and outputs formatted content? No. See above. Aside: We have actually built a
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Martijn Dashorst martijn.dasho...@gmail.com wrote: Several attempts at a refresh have been done but they all strand in two things: - time to actually do something with a design that is received enthusiastically - copywriting the website, especially the front page For example I tend to doodle in keynote for ideas of a new web site look and my latest thing is actually going back to our roots (at http://wicket.sourceforge.net/1.2): http://imgur.com/D74s1dj http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#0 http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#1 I think it looks awesome but lack currently the time to actually do something more with it other than have it in keynote. There are some hurdles to consider: - website technology (currently jekyll, but asciidoctor might be a better future candidate, especially for the reference guide) - svn pub sub, I guess there's git pub sub but am not sure if/how that works There was a discussion at infra@ the other day about this: David Nalley (Infra team leader): quote In a word, no. Technically, I am sure we could build it, but we won't. We use svnpubsub to keep the ~250 websites we have to manage a relatively sane process. Moving some sites to git makes that far more complicated. --David On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 2:07 AM, Tomer Shiran tshi...@apache.org wrote: I have a follow-up question. Is it possible to use git to publish the website as opposed to svn? We use git for the project's source code, so that would be convenient. /quote But this should not stop us. It is easy to create our own shell script that copies the Asciidoctor output to another folder (the site svn working directory) and commit it. We can add it to the release.sh script. - how to publish the site (currently generate, svn commit, but if guide is part of our build (to enable live, compiling examples) how does that integrate in the site workflow... Martijn On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Martin Grigorov mgrigo...@apache.org wrote: Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don’t steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. /quote More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Wicket examples are in the same styling as the website so yes, the same logic applies to them also - actually probably even more so as they really are 'examples of what a wicket app might look like' - which is a bit sad when, with a bit of Bootstrap and nice fonts, they can look so much more awesome. I'll check out jekyllrb. Ideally if we can change the generator and leave the jekyll source largely untouched for phase 1 then we avoid the effort of porting any content over to a new input format. Maybe a phase 2 could look at switching to a different input format if jekyll has issues/limitations. Regards, Chris -Original Message- From: Martin Grigorov [mailto:mgrigo...@apache.org] Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 7:21 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don't steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. /quote More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web pages: 1. Generated from any tool via XLST or anything? The code is hosted at https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/wicket/common/site/trunk. We use http://jekyllrb.com/ to generate static HTML files. It is simple and fast. 2. Served from a content management system? No. 3. Just static pages edited directly in HTML? Yes. 4. Served as a Wicket app? (would be awesome!) No. Apache Infrastructure team doesn't allow usage of dynamically generated stuff because this leads of the higher maintenance cost. I guess the answer to these determines the quickest way possible to a refurbished website if Wicketeers agree that is appropriate. Could we hook together a simple system that actually uses a very simple Wicket app itself to host the pages? Eg., provide page content in some wiki style text format and have a simple Wicket page class that interprets this and outputs formatted content? No. See above. Aside: We have actually built a content management system for editing/hosting websites using Wicket but it's proprietary and I don't think Apache would approve of an Apache site being served by a proprietary content management system so that's probably not an option. We don't mind hosting it if they didn't mind but I'm thinking that's not going to be approved
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
Some of those look very nice indeed. How were they created? It sounds like people have been toying with this for a long time. Perhaps it never happened because we wanted to go from the current site to mega awesome in one single step - which was always too much effort. I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? -Original Message- From: Martijn Dashorst [mailto:martijn.dasho...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 8:58 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? Several attempts at a refresh have been done but they all strand in two things: - time to actually do something with a design that is received enthusiastically - copywriting the website, especially the front page For example I tend to doodle in keynote for ideas of a new web site look and my latest thing is actually going back to our roots (at http://wicket.sourceforge.net/1.2): http://imgur.com/D74s1dj http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#0 http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#1 I think it looks awesome but lack currently the time to actually do something more with it other than have it in keynote. There are some hurdles to consider: - website technology (currently jekyll, but asciidoctor might be a better future candidate, especially for the reference guide) - svn pub sub, I guess there's git pub sub but am not sure if/how that works - how to publish the site (currently generate, svn commit, but if guide is part of our build (to enable live, compiling examples) how does that integrate in the site workflow... Martijn On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Martin Grigorov mgrigo...@apache.org wrote: Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don't steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. /quote More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web pages: 1. Generated from any tool via
RE: Wicke website makeover time?
This looks like it could be useful: http://jekyllbootstrap.com/ They have autowired all the necessary Liquid template stuff to make generation of a bootstrap styled site from jekyll source a breeze. Maybe it's worth having a play with it using the current wicket site's jekyll source? -Original Message- From: Martin Grigorov [mailto:mgrigo...@apache.org] Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2014 9:11 PM To: users@wicket.apache.org Subject: Re: Wicke website makeover time? On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Martijn Dashorst martijn.dasho...@gmail.com wrote: Several attempts at a refresh have been done but they all strand in two things: - time to actually do something with a design that is received enthusiastically - copywriting the website, especially the front page For example I tend to doodle in keynote for ideas of a new web site look and my latest thing is actually going back to our roots (at http://wicket.sourceforge.net/1.2): http://imgur.com/D74s1dj http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#0 http://imgur.com/UFxgSRI,jHawnst#1 I think it looks awesome but lack currently the time to actually do something more with it other than have it in keynote. There are some hurdles to consider: - website technology (currently jekyll, but asciidoctor might be a better future candidate, especially for the reference guide) - svn pub sub, I guess there's git pub sub but am not sure if/how that works There was a discussion at infra@ the other day about this: David Nalley (Infra team leader): quote In a word, no. Technically, I am sure we could build it, but we won't. We use svnpubsub to keep the ~250 websites we have to manage a relatively sane process. Moving some sites to git makes that far more complicated. --David On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 2:07 AM, Tomer Shiran tshi...@apache.org wrote: I have a follow-up question. Is it possible to use git to publish the website as opposed to svn? We use git for the project's source code, so that would be convenient. /quote But this should not stop us. It is easy to create our own shell script that copies the Asciidoctor output to another folder (the site svn working directory) and commit it. We can add it to the release.sh script. - how to publish the site (currently generate, svn commit, but if guide is part of our build (to enable live, compiling examples) how does that integrate in the site workflow... Martijn On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Martin Grigorov mgrigo...@apache.org wrote: Hi, On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): quote Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. /quote The client: quote Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don't steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them
Re: Wicke website makeover time?
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Chris Colman chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com wrote: Some of those look very nice indeed. How were they created? Just Keynote (a presentation tool for the Mac). It sounds like people have been toying with this for a long time. Yup. Perhaps it never happened because we wanted to go from the current site to mega awesome in one single step - which was always too much effort. Not really, but if you change the styling you want to fix the copywriting as well. Some of the copy on our site is as old as Wicket. I think a multi phase approach might have more chance of success - as I said in my immediate previous post if we could live with jekyll source for phase one (even though it may not be ideal) then we can keep most of the current content source 'as is' and simply choose a decent modern Bootstrap CSS template to re-render it in to deliver the best 'bang for buck' possible at this early stage. Bootstrap would be too standard and anonymous and would ultimately be a ball and chain. A little .less and responsiveness can easily be achieved without going bootstrap. Or does Jekyll have a fairly fixed translator that provides little customizability? Jekyll is fully customizable. It's just a translator from markdown to HTML with templates and includes. Martijn - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@wicket.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@wicket.apache.org
Wicke website makeover time?
Hi fellow wicketeers! We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or '2007ish style'. I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap templated webapps in Wicket. A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the live server for some reason. These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap customizations (eg., Bootswatch). First question: Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most people happy with the current look and feel)? If the answer is yes then please continue reading: Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a Wicket website makeover? Some questions for the site maintainers - Are the current web pages: 1. Generated from any tool via XLST or anything? 2. Served from a content management system? 3. Just static pages edited directly in HTML? 4. Served as a Wicket app? (would be awesome!) I guess the answer to these determines the quickest way possible to a refurbished website if Wicketeers agree that is appropriate. Could we hook together a simple system that actually uses a very simple Wicket app itself to host the pages? Eg., provide page content in some wiki style text format and have a simple Wicket page class that interprets this and outputs formatted content? Aside: We have actually built a content management system for editing/hosting websites using Wicket but it's proprietary and I don't think Apache would approve of an Apache site being served by a proprietary content management system so that's probably not an option. We don't mind hosting it if they didn't mind but I'm thinking that's not going to be approved. Regards, Chris
