Re: life into plone design mailinglist / documentation todo list for 2.0

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 05:47:46 +0100, Michael Zeltner  
<[email protected]> wrote:

> hey people

y0.

> i really have no idea who is signed up on this mailinglist - not much, i  
> assume, since this list was rather dead.

I'm reading it through Gmane, so I wouldn't show up in the subscriber list  
anyway. :]

> so i hope this is the first mail which will bring some life into this  
> list ;)

Amen to that.

> a *big* part of plone, is its ui. as most people know, we aim at  
> accessibility, flexiblity and sementical correctness. this isn't too  
> easy since flexibility and semantical correcness aren't directly related  
> ;) (see http://csszengarden.com/ - a disaster...) however, doing stuff  
> is one thing, but we need some things now that go partially further  
> developing. documentation. (god, i sound *so* old right now)

You're learning, glasshopper ;)

> as we all know, people aren't too educated when it comes to css and nice  
> xhtml markup. we need docs and links that explain them how they create  
> and use the stuff correctly, and why they should do that. we partially  
> started with that but we're far away from beeing ready.

The journey has just started, there are legions of people still waiting to  
see the light. :)

>    * we need a "handbook for blind/visually handicapped people". jodok  
> said they have made a checklist where problems for jaws are. i think  
> this list should be included, and better readers should be recommended  
> (since jaws is REALLY a pita... you know IE). (rather something for tom,  
> right?)

Yes. There is also the additional complication that access keys change in  
the different language versions of JAWS, *and* the JAWS people are using  
the same qualifiers as page-defined access keys for other things. This is  
quite messy.

>    * i need to document the tableless layout, and finish the layout  
> experiments on http://eaon.niij.org/layout_experiments/ (might be slow,  
> or not available - should be online after 10am CET)

Looking forward to that.

>    * find a resource for philosophical explanation of webstandards  
> (creative commons would be nice) and stuff like "don't depend on  
> javascript" or create a new one (and then, i don't think it shouldn't be  
> too plone specific, because contribution to the webstandard community is  
> important too - you know, we use their stuff too ;))

Indeed. An overarching document about best-practices with CSS, JS etc -  
and how it applies in the Plone context, with examples from the  
application - would be nice.

>    * collect workarounds for possible customisation woes (like the  
> #portal-top IE Thing, or the Netscape 6.2 footer)

Tips & Tricks.

>    * documentation on parts like "how do i create a portlet" "document  
> views in 2.0" or "plone 2 forms" - with explanation why it looks like  
> that.

Every UI element of Plone needs to be documented - we need a "Plone UI for  
Product creators", and a "Plone UI for the Casual Customizer" :)

> most of that should/will go into the infamous ui cookbook  
> http://plone.org/development/current/projects/ThePlone2UICookbook
>
> did i forget anything?

The new UI Team area is up at

http://plone.org/development/teams/ui

and it should be a place where we put work-in-progress and  
discussions/ideas for the future. It should *not* be a resting place for  
documentation, those parts should live in the /documentation hierarchy.

I plan to leverage the new FAQ/How-to/Tutorial structure as much as  
possible, in addition to creating a reference section. Maybe a Python  
script to parse the CSS and create nodes for documentation would be nice -  
sort of an API document for the CSS.

> PS: limi, and the other two guys in the cc, if you're not subscribed to  
> plone-design, http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plone-design  
> go there and do that now please ;)

Gmane, baby ;)

> PPS: could someone please hook that site up gmane? remember we want to  
> move as much ui related questions from -users and -developers to -design

It's there :)

Another thing I want to touch on - with the release of Plone 2.0, there's  
going to be *a lot* of people that will need guidance to update their  
sites to the new structure and re-construct their customizations.

As we have changed a lot of things, it is also our duty to make sure these  
people are helped. We do not want people to be stuck on the Plone 1.x  
platform just because they can't figure out how to move their existing  
customizations and layouts to it.

I am going to make this list the focal point of the template part of  
migrations - and we should:

a) answer all questions as precisely as we can

b) make sure stuff like "how do I migrate X" gets put into How-tos for  
later reference on plone.org.

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

  Alexander Limi   ·   Interaction Architect   ·   Plone Solutions

  Development · Training · Support · http://www.plonesolutions.com
__________________________________________________________________

  Plone Co-Founder   ·   http://plone.org   ·   Connecting Content

      高联合  ·  アレクサンダー リミ  ·  이미짱  ·  อเล็กซานเดอร์ ลีม



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