Ah, thanks for the pointer, Jacques.I forgot about this and will have a look at the work Nicolas did there so far.
Regards, Michael Am 05.07.17 um 14:09 schrieb Jacques Le Roux:
That makes sense Taher and was already discussed and mostly agreed IIRW.There is even a Jira for that https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5776Jacques Le 05/07/2017 à 13:40, Taher Alkhateeb a écrit :Hi Michael, My suggestion (other opinions might enrich the discussion) is to limitcurrent work to moving actual web items (html, css, javascript, images andso on). Moving ftl might be too much work and perhaps widgets should stay wherethey are. What I suggest moving is things that live in the browser to thebase/common theme.On Jul 5, 2017 11:50 AM, "Michael Brohl" <michael.br...@ecomify.de> wrote:Hi Taher,do I understand you correctly that you want to move all screen definitionsand 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 ina 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 onceand 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 thecommunity. After this, more restructuring and separation can be done. At ecomify, we are currently evaluating if we can set a team on it toimplement a new UI. It will be a lot of work and a big effort for us but Ithink 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 perhapsjust 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 wewant to go so far.Facelet is now the recommended technology for JSF https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2095397/what-is-the-diff erence-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.Notthat I don't like nor trust JSF (and Oracle, but then a bit less), butthework is overwhelming and obviously we don't have the resources for that.I digged a little deeper into the UI stuff, templates and theming andI agree that using Bootstrap would be a good thing. An alternative ishaveto correct my summary a bit: I mentioned AngularJS and Bootstrap on thesame level which is like comparing apples and oranges. AngularJS is a client-sideJavaScript framework to build single page applications, icluding hisownmodel-view-controller mechanism while Bootsrap is a CSS framework whichprovides comprehensive UI elements in a structured way.I guess that the use of Angular would need a whole lot more changes inOFBiz than the use of Bootstrap. So I tend to think that we have to agree on a CSS framework like Bootstrapand rewrite the UI to use the proper CSS classes for this framework.Thatwould possibly reduce the complexity and makes this statement of mineobsolete: - we will need a new approach to be able to "plug in" different UIframeworks. We'll need a UI layer who represents the screen contentsin anabstracted way (possbly an enhanced Freemarker macro library) and makeitpossible to generate HTML code with the right css attributes for thetarget library.It's maybe too ambitious wanting OFBiz to be able to be used withdifferent frameworks. The Bootstrap CSS world is well documented [1]andthere are a lot of really good looking and functional free templatesout 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?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 atothertechnology levels (no or less form widgets but more FTL macros, even anAPI of FTL macros). So I'd try to compare the rest...I'd also let Angular out of the picture. Some prefer React (initiallyfromFB) and I wonder what those who have used Angular 1 think about Angular2! I also remember another Google "attempt": GWT. Are there still people using itwith OFBiz? I guess you get my point, trends pass and tools with them...Jacques Best regards,Michael Brohl ecomify GmbH www.ecomify.de[1] https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_ref_all_classes.aspAm 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 OFBizWidget and seems to fit the new requirements described so far in thisthread. Regards, James YongOn 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 justwantto point out that (in my mind) the new theme/UI initiative goes far beyond having just another theme on base of the current technologicalstack: - 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 andalso easy for webdesigners to build a good design on base of this - developers should not care about CSS styles and classes, andwebdesigners should not cara about how the screen snippets are puttogether 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 contentsinan abstracted way (possbly an enhanced Freemarker macro library) and make it possible to generate HTML code with the right css attributesfor the target library. - a rewrite of the screens will be necessary to make the UI lesscluttered and overloaded. This will require some concepts/design workbeforehand- there are surely many other possible requirements (I am not a UX orweb design expert)I appreciate the contribution of the new theme. I am also sure thatthis 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 AllDon't forget that we also had the offer of a theme from Provolve andStannah. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6985This is a theme that they are using at the moment (so it working)andhave said it could be contributed back to the project. If it's onlyacase 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 forus. 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 atthe 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 focusedeffort on it if we want OFBiz to be recognized as a modern ERP. Also, if we imporve the UI, more users and also developers willbe 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 usan 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 asreferent on widget context, but my works has been disturb with theframework separation and the git-svn link break. Instead of continue, I help some people to work on the groovymini-lang conversion. I plan to improve a few the groovy DSL andafter I continue the work on commont-theme. Nicolas
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