Re: tiles/blocks

On 14/04/14 07:39, Dylan Jay wrote:
> On 14 Apr 2014, at 2:59 pm, Guido Stevens <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm working with Netsight to improve the baseline for Plone
>> intranets.
>>
>> We've identified having a tile-based layout engine as one of the
>> key technologies we need to have in place for this.
>>
>> This is not about "full deco" drag-n-drop editable WYSIWIG tiles:
>> full deco combines both layout (drag-n-drop tiles) and editing
>> (editable tiles). We want to focus just on the layout aspect and
>> solve that first. We're interested in rendering a constellation of
>> application tiles, not multiple richtext fields.
>
> Hi,
>
> It's a bit unclear from the above if you need just the ability to
> have dynamic "application" functionality inserted into a page, or you
> need that + some kind of grid system to layout those "tiles" in a
> layout. You seem to say you want the layout but not a layout editor
> which I'm not sure makes sense.

Hi Dylan, thanks for asking.

I want layout editing without content editing. And I think of layout 
editing as something that's been done by a development team rather than 
by a content editor. The goal is indeed to render application tiles into 
a grid based page layout.

Currently if I'm doing that I need to hardcode templates that for 
example place content providers in a Bootstrap3 grid. I'd like to have 
more runtime fluidity than that and be able to programmatically flow 
tiles into grid layouts.

> For example I've been working on tiles without any layout mechanism
> more than what tinymce already provides.

Yes, I'm aware of your work, and consider that to be almost orthogonal 
to what I'm aiming for. AFAICT, you're working on the editing experience 
(and page model) for folderish richtext content. My priority is not on 
content, but on rendering of - if you will - portal pages that aggregate 
tiles from many sources. No TinyMCE in sight.

> but I'm guessing you do want some kind of layout editor? more like
> collective.cover?

I like the part of collective.cover where you define a page grid by 
drag-n-dropping empty placeholder tiles. But then what you assign into 
those tiles should be wider than just content or collections, it should 
be possible to assign arbitrary bizkuwos*. And do that programmatically.

* any possible term is already overloaded.
"content providers" "viewlets" "tiles" "blocks" *cough* "portlets"

And, very important, it should be possible to /constrain/ the space of 
allowable layout combinations, from a design or management perspective.

> It might help to discuss the kind of use case that

As a designer
I want to define a coherent vocabulary of page layouts and block widgets
in order to support a consistent user experience.

As a developer
I want to dynamically combine multiple information streams
in order to render a context-sensitive personalized user interface.

As a user
I want to select and prioritize information sources and presentation
in order to maximize my effectivity and minimize information overload.

Does that clarify?

:*CU#
-- 
     Guido Stevens  |  +31.43.3618933  |  http://cosent.nl

     s o c i a l   k n o w l e d g e   t e c h n o l o g y


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