Hi Taher,do I understand you correctly that you want to move all screen definitions and the ftl template files (containing the html) to a central component outside the framework/applications?
Regards, Michael Am 04.07.17 um 23:50 schrieb Taher Alkhateeb:
Hi Michael, I think we agree, just a difference in semantics. What I mean by web is anything CSS, JavaScript, or HTML, not FreeMarker (for now). The smaller the effort the bigger the chances to move this initiative forward, so yeah I think we're on the same page. On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 12:35 AM, Michael Brohl <michael.br...@ecomify.de> wrote:Hi Taher, I agree that all ressources like images, css etc. should be moved away in a foundation component. I am not sure if I can follow your suggestion to move everything web-related from the framework to another component. In my mind, the foundation for the UI development (Renderer, macro libraries, transformers etc.) should reside in the framework. I think it would be also a too big move to rewrite/move all this at once and has not enough visible impact for users to be highly prioritized. For me, a new and modern UI would be the highest priority at the moment. I hope that this will attract more contributors and more users to grow the community. After this, more restructuring and separation can be done. At ecomify, we are currently evaluating if we can set a team on it to implement a new UI. It will be a lot of work and a big effort for us but I think it's worth it. We'll see how this will work out and how we can contribute this back to the project. Best regards, Michael Brohl ecomify GmbH www.ecomify.de Am 04.07.17 um 20:53 schrieb Taher Alkhateeb:I agree with Michael, baby steps for the win. I propose we perhaps just postpone "big ideas" for now and focus on things that can get results quickly to put life back into this initiative. Maybe next actions could be the following: - Create a base theme - Move all artifacts from framework/images to the base theme (jquery, bootstrap or whatever already exists) and do the rewiring. Also look for any web artifacts anywhere and move them to the base theme. Essentially, remove any thing that is web-based and centralize it in the theme. - Create an implementation theme on top of the base theme Once the above is done, then we can have a discussion of what to do next. There are _many_ ideas, but I will restrain myself this time until we get some action first :) On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Jacques Le Roux <jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com> wrote:Le 04/07/2017 à 16:57, Michael Brohl a écrit :Hi James, thanks for your suggestions. As far as I know, JSF would introduce some new technologies because it relies on beans and JSP's (correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not sure if we want to go so far.Facelet is now the recommended technology for JSF https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2095397/what-is-the-difference-between-jsf-servlet-and-jsp and both are parts of JavaEE. I agree with Michael and would not like to change OFBiz widgets for JSF. Not that I don't like nor trust JSF (and Oracle, but then a bit less), but the work is overwhelming and obviously we don't have the resources for that.I digged a little deeper into the UI stuff, templates and theming and have to correct my summary a bit: I mentioned AngularJS and Bootstrap on the same level which is like comparing apples and oranges. AngularJS is a client-side JavaScript framework to build single page applications, icluding his own model-view-controller mechanism while Bootsrap is a CSS framework which provides comprehensive UI elements in a structured way. I guess that the use of Angular would need a whole lot more changes in OFBiz than the use of Bootstrap. So I tend to think that we have to agree on a CSS framework like Bootstrap and rewrite the UI to use the proper CSS classes for this framework. That would possibly reduce the complexity and makes this statement of mine obsolete:- we will need a new approach to be able to "plug in" different UI frameworks. We'll need a UI layer who represents the screen contents in an abstracted way (possbly an enhanced Freemarker macro library) and make it possible to generate HTML code with the right css attributes for the target library.It's maybe too ambitious wanting OFBiz to be able to be used with different frameworks. The Bootstrap CSS world is well documented [1] and there are a lot of really good looking and functional free templates out there. So if we provide the UI code for it, together with one basic theme, users can put their own themes on top of it. Maybe this is a way to come to a competitive UI in a relative short amount of time. I don't think that we can afford to make this a year-long project. What do others think?I agree that using Bootstrap would be a good thing. An alternative is Foundation https://www.keycdn.com/blog/bootstrap-vs-foundation, this could be possibly discussed. That's what ilscipio has used, with some success at the UI level I'd say (they now tend to lean to Foundation). Now they derived from OFBiz at other technology levels (no or less form widgets but more FTL macros, even an API of FTL macros). So I'd try to compare the rest... I'd also let Angular out of the picture. Some prefer React (initially from FB) and I wonder what those who have used Angular 1 think about Angular 2! I also remember another Google "attempt": GWT. Are there still people using it with OFBiz? I guess you get my point, trends pass and tools with them... JacquesBest regards, Michael Brohl ecomify GmbH www.ecomify.de [1] https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_ref_all_classes.asp Am 03.07.17 um 15:00 schrieb James Yong:Hi Michael and all, We can look into JSF 2.2 as a possible candidate. It is similar to OFBiz Widget and seems to fit the new requirements described so far in this thread. Regards, James Yong On 2017-07-03 17:42 (+0800), Michael Brohl <michael.br...@ecomify.de> wrote:Hi Sharan, thanks for the reminder. It's fine to have another theme to choose for the "old" UI, I just want to point out that (in my mind) the new theme/UI initiative goes far beyond having just another theme on base of the current technological stack: - new themes should be responsive - we should be able to use different UI frameworks like Bootstrap and AngularJS who take care of responsiveness and browser compatibility - it must be easy for developers to write the screen structure and also easy for webdesigners to build a good design on base of this - developers should not care about CSS styles and classes, and webdesigners should not cara about how the screen snippets are put together or how the screens get their data. - we will need a new approach to be able to "plug in" different UI frameworks. We'll need a UI layer who represents the screen contents in an abstracted way (possbly an enhanced Freemarker macro library) and make it possible to generate HTML code with the right css attributes for the target library. - a rewrite of the screens will be necessary to make the UI less cluttered and overloaded. This will require some concepts/design work beforehand - there are surely many other possible requirements (I am not a UX or web design expert) I appreciate the contribution of the new theme. I am also sure that this will not solve the challenge to drive OFBiz to another level, UI wise. Thanks and regards, Michael Brohl ecomify GmbH www.ecomify.de Am 03.07.17 um 10:52 schrieb Sharan Foga:Hi All Don't forget that we also had the offer of a theme from Provolve and Stannah. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6985 This is a theme that they are using at the moment (so it working) and have said it could be contributed back to the project. If it's only a case of having someone volunteer to implement it into the trunk then this could be a way to get a nice theme up and running quickly for us. Thanks Sharan On 03/07/17 10:29, Michael Brohl wrote:Thanks Nicolas, is there anything, even work in progress, you are able to share at the moment? This way other could chime in and help moving further. Thanks, Michael Brohl ecomify GmbH www.ecomify.de Am 03.07.17 um 09:26 schrieb Nicolas Malin:Hi Michael Le 02/07/2017 à 20:42, Michael Brohl a écrit :Hi Julien, all, I'd like to resurrect this discussion and the activities to improve the OFBiz user interface. I think we really should put some focused effort on it if we want OFBiz to be recognized as a modern ERP. Also, if we imporve the UI, more users and also developers will be attracted which will be a win for the community and further development of OFBiz. Nicolas and others who have started work on this: can you give us an update about the efforts undertaken and where we stand?Currently I block on the comon-theme with a good information propagation. My next step will be create a dedicate object as referent on widget context, but my works has been disturb with the framework separation and the git-svn link break. Instead of continue, I help some people to work on the groovy mini-lang conversion. I plan to improve a few the groovy DSL and after I continue the work on commont-theme. Nicolas
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