Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
On 07/03/2014 02:17 AM, Gaurav Saini wrote: Correct, it looks odd that for new blogger it will not show the tag cloud. Rather than removing we can put a condition that if more than 5 tags comes than we can show that complete box/panel of hot tags. Oh, I didn't realize a tag cloud will appear if there are enough tags. Yes, great idea, show it as a unit--either desc+cloud or neither. Please note, all of the open JIRAs are good to get fixed--feel free to assign to yourself and then work on whichever ones interest you once you get commit access. As we're nearing a release though, try to avoid major commits (things that can't be tested well before committing but we'd want to run with for a few weeks to make sure nothing fails) or partial commits that would put the application in an unreleasable state. Regards, Glen
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
What I could will do is add an element into the theme.xml to control whether there is a second theme available for the templating engine, and update the theme/stylesheet edit classes accordingly to not show the mobile tab. I think these edit programs use the YUI css tab. Are we sticking with YUI? On 4 July 2014 02:05, Glen Mazza glen.ma...@gmail.com wrote: 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
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
Hi Greg, I don't think the theme.xml needs to be altered for that, it would be redundant...the presence of multiple theme definitions automatically should mean that both templates are active, based on their type/ element. Below is part of the theme.xml for the basic theme: template action=weblog nameWeblog/name descriptionweblog/description link/link navbarfalse/navbar hiddentrue/hidden templateCode templateLanguagevelocity/templateLanguage contentTypetext/html/contentType contentsFileweblog.vm/contentsFile typestandard/type /templateCode templateCode templateLanguagevelocity/templateLanguage contentTypetext/html/contentType contentsFileweblog-mobile.vm/contentsFile typemobile/type /templateCode /template By virtue of the fact that one templateCode has a type of standard and the other has mobile means they're both active for their respective types. If the person doesn't want mobile he can just comment-out the latter templateCode definition, that should suffice I think. Otherwise you're gonna have people uncomment the second templateCode/ and get confused why it isn't activating, forgetting that they also forgot to add in a new useMobileThemetrue/useMobileTheme element. I think these edit programs use the YUI css tab. Are we sticking with YUI? I think you mean the JSP pages that we use to edit blog entries (EntryEdit.jsp for example), yes, I just noticed it uses YUI. YUI should be fine, definitely for 5.1, if ain't broke don't fix it. Still, I put in a JIRA (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ROL-2019) for us to update our YUI library to a recent release of it (we're using a YUI from 2009), as that YUI apparently is also used by themes wanting that library, and I'd like theme customizers to have access to the latest and greatest. Feel free to grab it if you wish. Glen On 07/04/2014 03:15 AM, Greg Huber wrote: What I could will do is add an element into the theme.xml to control whether there is a second theme available for the templating engine, and update the theme/stylesheet edit classes accordingly to not show the mobile tab. I think these edit programs use the YUI css tab. Are we sticking with YUI? On 4 July 2014 02:05, Glen Mazza glen.ma...@gmail.com wrote: 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
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
Hello Glen, Its great that we now have a good solid backend foundation for roller. As, you said we can now improve the front-end side of roller with the changes you mentioned below. I am sharing below my ideas about the points you mentioned. On Thursday 03 July 2014 07:19 AM, 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. Correct, it looks odd that for new blogger it will not show the tag cloud. Rather than removing we can put a condition that if more than 5 tags comes than we can show that complete box/panel of hot tags. Rather than moving the top horizontal menu we can just add another nav element Categories (and then show all categories in dropdown when someone hover over it) eg: http://awesomescreenshot.com/02f333os92 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. 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. +1 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. 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
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
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 glen.ma...@gmail.com 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 about 50% of Apache websites are now using
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
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
Re: Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
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
Roller UI Ideas (Was Re: ApacheCon CFP closes June 25)
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 about 50% of Apache websites are now using Bootstrap and I'd like Roller to be one of them. The stuff that is on the Roller Wiki would remain there, so that doesn't need converting, just the several relatively small pages making up roller.apache.org. 7.) We eventually should have a sample theme (probably non-responsive as this is a portal-type page) showing how to display Roller's Planet functionality (it is very crude here: http://rollerweblogger.org/project/page/planet, the CSS isn't working). I haven't looked at this at all, and am unsure how well the backend still supports it. If any of this sounds interesting to you (or any other Roller committer), just let us know so we're not duplicating effort and feel free to jump into it! Regards, Glen On 06/18/2014 03:18 AM, Gaurav Saini wrote: Hello Glen, Thanks for this informative reply. I was looking for some suggestions and you provided. :) I am interested in any UI work related to roller. I can handle all the UI work inside roller although there might not be as much but if you have any issues in JIRA known to you I would love to contribute towards them. I have been working on AngularJS, nodejs projects from last some time and also have vast expirience in CSS mainly how to perfectly use Bootstrap. I am focusing my future in client side with nodejs coming in scope we can have backend built with javascript. So, I love to contribute to any client side work (UI) to roller anytime. :) Thanks Gaurav On Sunday 15 June 2014 10:11 PM, Glen Mazza wrote: Hi Gaurav, yes, I hope gaurav the theme (and Gaurav the person) gets a lot *more* attention too... :) You are most welcome to
