If you're a Tiles user, I'd like to know: what sorts of tools would help you design and manage Tiled applications? Alternatively, what tools are you using now?
My group writes tools for Struts. Currently (WSSD 5.0) we support Tiles only by configuring a Struts project appropriately (e.g. copy the taglib, declare in web.xml) and some rendering (in a visual editor for JSPs), but we want to do more. We have some ideas, but we'd like to hear, from real Tiles users, answers to the following: 0 What development tools do you use now? How well do they support Tiles? 1 Are there any difficulties that you commonly encounter in using Tiles? Are there tasks that slow you down, or are too-easily overlooked? 2 What sorts of tools would help you? E.g. for developing and reusing definitions? 3 Are there any tools of which you have thought, "It would be very nice to have something that did <your functionality here>"? We've already gotten some feedback from Cedric Dumoulin: feel free to add/modify/extend. Cedric Dumoulin 02/19/2003 05:40 AM > When I have started developing Tiles, I had think of a visual tool > to help developing websites by assembling visually piece of pages > (now called tiles). > My idea was to have a window presenting available tiles and > layout, and to be able to drag and drop them to build a new page. > The resulting page is an assembly of tiles, not a concatenation of > code in one single html page. Changing one tile will be > automatically reflected in all pages using it. This dream is not > achieve yet, but maybe one day .... >> * Are there any difficulties that you find Tiles users commonly >> encounter? Are there tasks that slow them down, or are easily >> overlooked? > * Creating and managing definitions > * Managing a site made of dynamically assemble pages > * Associate a definition (which have a logical name) to an URL > o This can be done in several ways: use a jsp page, use a > struts action, use a special servlet. I think a future > version of Tiles will allow to specify the association > directly in the tiles-config file. > * Developing a new layout (which is also a tile) > * Developing reusable tiles >> * What sorts of tools would be useful to a Tiles developer? E.g. >> for developing and reusing definitions? > * A tool for managing the definitions: > o Such tool can have a tree rendering each definition as a > node. A node show all definition properties, with a > visual clue to distinguish inherited, overloaded and new > one. > o Changing properties in a parent definition is reflected > in all child inheriting from the definition > o When a definition is selected, its associated jsp page > can be shown, and an analyze can be done to check if all > needed attributes are present. > o The jsp pages can also be shown in a tree. It is > possible to drag and drop a page url to a definition > attribute ... > o It is possible to generate the skeleton of a jsp tiles > from a definition > * A tool to create new tiles / layout > o Maybe this is simply a jsp tag editor with appropriate > Tiles tags. >> * Are there any tools of which you have thought, "It would be very >> nice to have <your tool here>"? > * A tool to visually manage a site made by assembling tiles > o In such tool, you see "pages" accessible from any client > (in a tree ?). When you select a page, you can edit its > assembly (layout, attributes, sub- tiles...). The editor > is recursive: when you edit a tile, you can go to edit > one of its sub-tile. > o You can create / modify pages by drag and drop existing > tiles > o The tool generate/modify the definitions and the tiles > for you. > This kind of tool would be very great ... Tom Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> WebSphere Studio Struts Tools --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
