Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)

[Greg Huber]

5.) Shelan, another contributor around 2010 created a mobile weblog view
for a blog, as you can see in the upper-right corner here:
http://www.nailedtothex.org/roller/kyle/entry/nested-list-element-issue-of1
.  The mobile theme doesn't seem to work right today (that blog entry at
that link shows the problems with it, the blogger had to make changes
basically making it a standard blog anyway, and even with those changes I
saw further errors with it.)  What Shelan did was very nice circa 2010
(before Bootstrap existed) but might be frowned upon today, I think one is
expected to use a responsive theme today when you want to support all types
of devices, rather than have (antiquated?) "click here for mobile" and
"click here for standard" buttons.  Unsure, but we may wish to pull this
out of the basic theme once fauxcoly and gaurav are better established.

The mobile theme will switch automatically if you view with a mobile
device, the button is there as a preview and example.  Use an user agent
switcher.

I guess mobile first will become the standard, but what I like about the
separate theme you can still use your investment in your existing design
(desktop) and then a responsive design for the mobile/tablets, where you
can target more the mobile devices rather than one fits all design (which
tend to be more mobile centric than desktop).  Yes more work but for roller
the themes are quite simple.

Surfing an a mobile?  hmm, think apps are the way to go as you get more
"lockin" and a much better user experience.  ...a whole lot more work and
complexity however.


On 3 July 2014 02:49, Glen Mazza  wrote:

> Hi Gaurav, I've been working heavily on the backend and am thankfully
> getting to a point where I can look more at the frontend.  We may need to
> release Roller 5.1 just to get retire the 5.0.x series -- front-end looks
> very similar, but back-end is much cleaner and faster to build, lower
> maintenance, etc.  So Roller 5.1 is at least standing on a good foundation,
> even if the UI themes need some work.
>
> Some of the UI things I'd like to see done (some may get into 5.1, some
> may in a subsequent patch release), regardless of who does them, are as
> follows:
>
> 1.) Both the gaurav and fauxcoly themes OOTB say "here's the top 30 tags
> for this blog", but that doesn't help a starting blogger who has just one
> or two blog entries and next to no tags--the blog looks bad that way.  A
> blog theme should look good from day one even if the blogger has just a few
> blog entries.  I'd like to see the tag stuff removed and have it replaced
> with either the blogroll, ATOM feeds, or something else.  One idea is to
> move the top horizontal menu line providing archives, login, buttons to the
> side and include categories in the top horizontal line instead.
>
> 2.) The fauxcoly theme uses YUI (Yahoo User Interface) stored in
> webapp/roller-ui/yui, but the YUI is from 2009.  I'd like to have it
> replaced with the latest release YUI.  The YUI we ship with Roller is not
> just for fauxcoly, but for any YUI-based custom theme a user may wish to
> create (by keeping it in roller-ui/yui a new theme creator doesn't have to
> bother importing all the YUI files with his theme.)  Also, if the theme can
> be tweaked a bit to be responsive while using YUI still that would be good.
>
> 3.) The gaurav theme of course uses Bootstrap and JQuery.  Likewise,
> rather than directly incorporate that stuff in the gaurav theme, I'd like
> to have it placed under webapp/roller-ui/bootstrap and have the gaurav
> theme reference those files from there.  That way, again, anyone can come
> up with their own Bootstrap-based theme without needing to upload all the
> Bootstrap files.
>
> 4.) Both the gaurav and fauxcoly themes duplicate an icons folder having
> all the social media bitmaps for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  I'd
> like to see those icons stored in one place, maybe roller-ui/icons or
> /socialmedia or whatever, so themes can reference those icons without
> needing to duplicate them into their themes.
>
> 5.) Shelan, another contributor around 2010 created a mobile weblog view
> for a blog, as you can see in the upper-right corner here:
> http://www.nailedtothex.org/roller/kyle/entry/nested-list-
> element-issue-of1 .  The mobile theme doesn't seem to work right today
> (that blog entry at that link shows the problems with it, the blogger had
> to make changes basically making it a standard blog anyway, and even with
> those changes I saw further errors with it.)  What Shelan did was very nice
> circa 2010 (before Bootstrap existed) but might be frowned upon today, I
> think one is expected to use a responsive theme today when you want to
> support all types of devices, rather than have (antiquated?) "click here
> for mobile" and "click here for standard" buttons.  Unsure, but we may wish
> to pull this out of the basic theme once fauxcoly and gaurav are better
> established.
>
> 6.) Our website is old-fashioned, perhaps 

Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)

[Glen Mazza]

On 07/03/2014 02:17 AM, Gaurav Saini wrote:


2.) The fauxcoly theme uses YUI (Yahoo User Interface) stored in 
webapp/roller-ui/yui, but the YUI is from 2009.  I'd like to have it 
replaced with the latest release YUI.  The YUI we ship with Roller is 
not just for fauxcoly, but for any YUI-based custom theme a user may 
wish to create (by keeping it in roller-ui/yui a new theme creator 
doesn't have to bother importing all the YUI files with his theme.)  
Also, if the theme can be tweaked a bit to be responsive while using 
YUI still that would be good.


What I think is two option for this, we can replace YUI with bootstrap 
themes (http://bootswatch.com/) and this is make it responsive. Also 
with this we can upgrade the back-end UI also through which it will be 
easier to create blogs from any screens (mobiles and tabs on the go).
Another option is upgrading to YUI 2 to YUI 3, but YUI 3 might not 
provide much features which bootstrap provides, although from docs it 
seems it has responsiveness support.


My Idea is to go with bootstrap as its easier to upgrade it and active 
development is going at hight pace and will enhance the UI very much.




If YUI is not part of your present research interests, no problem, leave 
#2 alone then -- I'll look into this one.  I haven't looked at YUI much 
but if it's becoming obsolete, we can switch it to another up-and-coming 
competitor to Bootstrap.  But I think it would be good for Roller to 
support a 2nd UI CSS & JavaScript library, even if it is not as good or 
as popular as Bootstrap, if only to demonstrate that Roller has a 
flexible architecture and hence isn't hardcoded to a specific UI 
technology.


In earlier versions of Roller (for example JRoller hosted by DZone), new 
bloggers would get a choice of maybe 15 themes and would just choose 
whichever one they felt looks best.  I'm trying to move to fewer but 
more functional themes -- i.e., (1) we have at least one 
jquery/bootstrap theme , (2) a YUI (or another technology) theme, (3) 
(apparently) a theme that can flip between mobile and standard (basic 
theme), (4) we have a front-page theme (which is just an accumulator of 
other blogs, looks like this one: http://www.jroller.com/), (5) a 
non-responsive theme for blogging software code (basic theme will do, 
but I like the Rolling theme I use on my blog), and (6) (future) a 
planet theme.  Each theme would give users a starting point based on 
their desires that they can subsequently customize as they wish.



4.) Both the gaurav and fauxcoly themes duplicate an icons folder 
having all the social media bitmaps for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, 
etc.  I'd like to see those icons stored in one place, maybe 
roller-ui/icons or /socialmedia or whatever, so themes can reference 
those icons without needing to duplicate them into their themes.


+1. Another Idea is to add a share link with each blog similar to 
this. (http://awesomescreenshot.com/021333r131). I think we can use 
these share buttons, we can check other apache projects for any 
licence issue if it have.


All I care about here is just that the icons are centralized so the user 
doesn't have to import them with a new theme.  Share links are already 
available via 3rd party tools (http://www.addthis.com/)--we can make our 
own, but it needs to look reasonably comparable in quality to the 3rd 
party alternatives; if it's not competitive it's not worth reinventing 
the wheel.  Also, I haven't confirmed but would like to make sure that 
Roller supports the well respected Disqus comment management system that 
your blog uses.  We must always avoid proprietary, LGPL, or GPL 
licenses.  Most others (BSD, MIT, Apache of course) are fine.





5.) Shelan, another contributor around 2010 created a mobile weblog 
view for a blog, as you can see in the upper-right corner here: 
http://www.nailedtothex.org/roller/kyle/entry/nested-list-element-issue-of1 
.  The mobile theme doesn't seem to work right today (that blog entry 
at that link shows the problems with it, the blogger had to make 
changes basically making it a standard blog anyway, and even with 
those changes I saw further errors with it.)  What Shelan did was 
very nice circa 2010 (before Bootstrap existed) but might be frowned 
upon today, I think one is expected to use a responsive theme today 
when you want to support all types of devices, rather than have 
(antiquated?) "click here for mobile" and "click here for standard" 
buttons.  Unsure, but we may wish to pull this out of the basic theme 
once fauxcoly and gaurav are better established.


+1. Rather than different mobile and standard buttons we can have that 
same theme work on mobile, tablets and desktops. I think this might 
also clean up a bit code in java and front-end themes as we do not 
have to make specific templates for mobiles.


Actually, reading Greg's email, apparently the theme will detect whether 
one is reading via smart phone or laptop, and switch to that theme 
dir

Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)

[Glen Mazza]

On 07/03/2014 04:07 AM, Greg Huber wrote:

The mobile theme will switch automatically if you view with a mobile
device, the button is there as a preview and example.  Use an user agent
switcher.



Thanks, I did not realize that, and it would be nice for Roller to 
architecturally maintain that functionality for users who would that 
capability.  I also like how its theme.xml shows how multiple themes can 
be bundled together.


Glen

Jenkins build became unstable: Roller » Roller webapp #1289

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See 

Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)

[Gaurav Saini]

Hello Glen,

I like the idea of support a 2nd UI library in Roller. Foundation is 
another which we can have in roller (http://foundation.zurb.com/). There 
are also a lot of people using these library. I can build another Roller 
Theme in future using foundation, so that way we will be having 
Bootstrap, YUI and foundation themes.


Also, as you mentioned about 6 theme types, that also seems great as 
this way user will have a lot of choices to choose from.


I am now taking up ROL-2022 now and waiting for my credentials so I can 
have a go with SVN. I have gone with the other JIRA you mentioned. I can 
easily grab them as I will be familiar to the SVN.


Thanks
Gaurav

On Friday 04 July 2014 06:30 AM, Glen Mazza wrote:


On 07/03/2014 02:17 AM, Gaurav Saini wrote:


2.) The fauxcoly theme uses YUI (Yahoo User Interface) stored in 
webapp/roller-ui/yui, but the YUI is from 2009.  I'd like to have it 
replaced with the latest release YUI.  The YUI we ship with Roller 
is not just for fauxcoly, but for any YUI-based custom theme a user 
may wish to create (by keeping it in roller-ui/yui a new theme 
creator doesn't have to bother importing all the YUI files with his 
theme.)  Also, if the theme can be tweaked a bit to be responsive 
while using YUI still that would be good.


What I think is two option for this, we can replace YUI with 
bootstrap themes (http://bootswatch.com/) and this is make it 
responsive. Also with this we can upgrade the back-end UI also 
through which it will be easier to create blogs from any screens 
(mobiles and tabs on the go).
Another option is upgrading to YUI 2 to YUI 3, but YUI 3 might not 
provide much features which bootstrap provides, although from docs it 
seems it has responsiveness support.


My Idea is to go with bootstrap as its easier to upgrade it and 
active development is going at hight pace and will enhance the UI 
very much.




If YUI is not part of your present research interests, no problem, 
leave #2 alone then -- I'll look into this one.  I haven't looked at 
YUI much but if it's becoming obsolete, we can switch it to another 
up-and-coming competitor to Bootstrap.  But I think it would be good 
for Roller to support a 2nd UI CSS & JavaScript library, even if it is 
not as good or as popular as Bootstrap, if only to demonstrate that 
Roller has a flexible architecture and hence isn't hardcoded to a 
specific UI technology.


In earlier versions of Roller (for example JRoller hosted by DZone), 
new bloggers would get a choice of maybe 15 themes and would just 
choose whichever one they felt looks best.  I'm trying to move to 
fewer but more functional themes -- i.e., (1) we have at least one 
jquery/bootstrap theme , (2) a YUI (or another technology) theme, (3) 
(apparently) a theme that can flip between mobile and standard (basic 
theme), (4) we have a front-page theme (which is just an accumulator 
of other blogs, looks like this one: http://www.jroller.com/), (5) a 
non-responsive theme for blogging software code (basic theme will do, 
but I like the Rolling theme I use on my blog), and (6) (future) a 
planet theme.  Each theme would give users a starting point based on 
their desires that they can subsequently customize as they wish.



4.) Both the gaurav and fauxcoly themes duplicate an icons folder 
having all the social media bitmaps for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, 
etc.  I'd like to see those icons stored in one place, maybe 
roller-ui/icons or /socialmedia or whatever, so themes can reference 
those icons without needing to duplicate them into their themes.


+1. Another Idea is to add a share link with each blog similar to 
this. (http://awesomescreenshot.com/021333r131). I think we can use 
these share buttons, we can check other apache projects for any 
licence issue if it have.


All I care about here is just that the icons are centralized so the 
user doesn't have to import them with a new theme.  Share links are 
already available via 3rd party tools (http://www.addthis.com/)--we 
can make our own, but it needs to look reasonably comparable in 
quality to the 3rd party alternatives; if it's not competitive it's 
not worth reinventing the wheel.  Also, I haven't confirmed but would 
like to make sure that Roller supports the well respected Disqus 
comment management system that your blog uses.  We must always avoid 
proprietary, LGPL, or GPL licenses.  Most others (BSD, MIT, Apache of 
course) are fine.





5.) Shelan, another contributor around 2010 created a mobile weblog 
view for a blog, as you can see in the upper-right corner here: 
http://www.nailedtothex.org/roller/kyle/entry/nested-list-element-issue-of1 
.  The mobile theme doesn't seem to work right today (that blog 
entry at that link shows the problems with it, the blogger had to 
make changes basically making it a standard blog anyway, and even 
with those changes I saw further errors with it.)  What Shelan did 
was very nice circa 2010 (before Bootstrap existed) but might be