Call for comments: Focus on web developer usability issues in eZ publish 3.6

Tuesday 30 November 2004 12:44:26 am

As announced in the latest community newsletter (http://ez.no/community/news/community_newsletter_26_11_2004) the 3.6 development cycle will in addition to documentation and performance also focus on development usability. The goal of the development usability process is to make you implement sites more efficiently with eZ publish. We already have quite a lot of ideas, but we are very much interested in what you, our users think.

These are the improvements we currently have in mind (nothing is decided yet):

- The possibility to turn on a developer toolbar/menu. From this menu you will have access to the most common cache cleaning functionality and the possibility to turn various debug functions on and off on the fly.

- Improve the context sensitive menu found in 3.5 when you click on the big icon when viewing a node. This menu should also provide quick links to create template overrides, e.g New class override or New node override which takes you to the override page.

- An override overview page where the various templates and all the overrides for that template and the conditions (if any) for the override are listed. (probably in the form of a tree)

- A template overview page showing the templates included by another template.

- Create a new debug mode where all the templates used by a rendered page are listed at the bottom of the page with direct links for typical functionality like view, edit and override.

- Improve the template syntax: add if,for,while and break statements.

- Improve the template edit page. Add a "save without exit" button. Maybe add a few tool buttons that add typical template functions.

- Information about (or link to) templates, related to a specific class, from the class view.

If you have any ideas on how we can improve the way you develop with eZ publish, or if you have any comments on the above suggestions, don't hesitate to reply to this thread and help us make eZ publish the product you want.

Cheers,
Frederik

Tuesday 30 November 2004 5:30:08 am

I thought the same thing, default & secure support for the eZ CMF Developer would be nice. By the way Paul, I think Firefox 1.0 doesn't accept the 0.4.2 extension (or is it just my browser - quite possible I corrupted a chrome)

www.dbinformatics.com.au

We are always interested in hearing from experienced eZ PHP programmers and eZ template designers interested in contract work.

Tuesday 30 November 2004 6:01:35 am

Just an idea..

Would be great to have a syntax-check button in the admin-interface. Easy consitency/syntax-checking of the templates would certainly make my day better..

felix

Publlic Relations Manager
Greater Stavanger
www.greaterstavanger.com

Wednesday 01 December 2004 10:55:59 am

Hi,

I don't sure this is developer usability, but it is a developer issue, documentation on best practices to extend ezpublish is something missing

i.e : Custom Content Action, a concept or idea that sounds powerful at first, but we weren't able to use practically, it seems not fully implemented or at least documented to be useful

Also could be interesting the implementation of a wizard development framework
( something like you implemented for setup, but aimed to be generic ). This could make easier the implementation of user interfaces for multiple views/steps process

Lazaro
http://www.mzbusiness.com

Wednesday 01 December 2004 2:00:01 pm

Xavier,

It is possible to set a parameter and use it in later events. The process parameters are what you need to use. Going back to the point now...

The current workflow system is too limited. The whole trigger system should be replaced by something more flexible if you want to make heavy use of the workflow system. Making the multiplexer event the trigger system would be a good approximation of what it should be. As it is right now, the workflow system doesn't feel like it's part of the system.

Debugging workflows is also a difficult thing. And once something goes wrong, it's hard to recover it.

We try to avoid workflows as much as possible for all those reasons. And that's a shame, because a nice workflow system would be a very powerful tool.

Hans
http://blog.hansmelis.be

Thursday 02 December 2004 12:33:32 am

Regarding the workflow system: You are completely right, the workflow system needs attention. In order to do it right however it needs more attention and time than we can fit into 3.6. Its time will come however.

Friday 03 December 2004 12:09:25 am

Most of us probably started by learning the template language through looking/tweeking the default templates. These should be crystal clear and commented. Please allow me to take an example to illustrate my rant :

{* Default object admin view template *}
{default with_children=true()
         is_editable=true()
         is_standalone=true()}
{let page_limit=15
    list_count=and($with_children,fetch('content','list_count',hash
               (parent_node_id,  $node.node_id,depth_operator,eq)))}
{default content_object=$node.object
         content_version=$node.contentobject_version_object
         node_name=$node.name}

{section show=$is_standalone}
<form name="fullview" method="post" action={"content/action"|ezurl}>
{/section}
...

When you have difficulties to understand the language and what is into $node (BTW, put a comment to promote the |attribute(show) that's a life saver), you really don't need to ask yourself:
- Where do all these variables (with_children,is_editable,is_standalone) come from and what are there purpose? (still haven't got the is_standalone by the way)
- "listcount = and(..." ? Looks like one of these dreaded C line where you pack as many instruction into a line as you can. Really smart, but hard to decipher and at least unneedingly disturbing
- "content_object=$node.object" I own a pint to the one able to explain me the purpose of this line (not easier to read, quicker to type, easier to reuse ...)
- idem "node_name=$node.name" I only missed this comment: {* set the node name from the name of the node *} ;)
- "{section show=$is_standalone}<form name="fullview" method="post" action={"content/action"|ezurl}>{/section}". Ok you have a form that does the action "action", but only when alone... You don't understand what might be this action and then you wonder what this naughty node might do when left alone... ;)

Have a look at the template code again, think of it as learing material, clean and comment, that's the best thing you can do for the new developers.

About adding new instructions (if, for...). For my web sites, the section and fetch instructions are more than enough for 95% of the needs. The purpose of a template system is to separate the content and the logic, not to create another programmation language. Granted a "section show=" isn't that far away from a "if", but if you really want to add a showif instruction (for example), at least modify all the templates and replace the "section show" by the showif and obsolete the "section show".

X+

P.S. Sorry for the rant.

http://www.sydesy.com

Friday 03 December 2004 5:04:08 am

I think the if,for,while and break in the template language is a very good idea. I have wished this since 3.0.

I would also like to suggest a new event system. A module could be able to register functions/methods that will be called on different events. The most important events would be:

pre_edit - would be called before entering edit mode of an object. Editing may be aborted depending of the return value of the event. This could as an example be used to perform some extra access control on criterias that are beyond the current role system.

pre_publish - would be called before the publishing of an object is performed. Publishing may be aborted(returned to edit mode with message) depending of return value of the event. This could be used to perform some extra validation.

post_publish - would be called after an object is published. This could as an example be used to update a change log.

I have used similar events in other systems and found them very useful.

Tuesday 07 December 2004 7:06:53 am

Of course this is only a newbie's comment... but:
I wish the multilingual setup of the site would come more easily out of the box, not by manually setting up further siteaccesses and so on. The different languages should be accessable via the out-of-the-box design.
Why? Because this is a key feature of the software, and the steps for such multilingual install are very suitable for an automatic installation process, as I understand it.
I don't know how much work can be invested in an automated template creation process. For me the biggest disadvantage of ezpublish is the coding of the templates which is hard to learn, although very powerful. However, it behaves totally different from the setup of the content, which really can't be more easy! Other systems, while not being so flexible on the content side, offer more click-and-out-of-the-box design and are quite successfull this way... Ezpublish should keep an eye on this development.

Wednesday 29 December 2004 10:35:08 am

Within the documentation on ez.no, there is at least one request to develop a good Wiki and to use it for documentation. I want to add my vote for that.

The current documentation is well-organized but limited by the capabilities of the system it's documented within.

For instance, I prefer a more ordered list structure, like the documentation at mysql.org, which uses notation like this: 1.1, 1.1.2, etc., and which is printable in .pdf form and navigable/viewable in Html.

Wikipedia's open source php-based MediaWiki has a lot of this capability (www.wikipedia.org). There is also another java-based wiki, which, from a users perspective, can give us many lessons to learn, and its popularity with high-powered users attests to its business utility: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/default.jsp?clicked=footer

This brings me to the second bird. I really need the ability to develop a website that has wiki workspaces which are assigned with granular privileges to various users and groups of users.

Thanks for listening.