Pete,
Joshua wrote >> http://webpatterns.org/
*checks it out*
ok, so the term "patterns" is potentially a too far advanced term for
what i'm thinking of. all that microformat and machine readable data
stuff is certainly interesting (Allsopp - i can hear you screaming
about it from here ;-) but...
I *think* what i'm talking about it different. i'm just thinking more
along the lines of a library of cut'n'paste chunks of re-usable code..
maybe i'm trying to jump to the result of what the "web-patternists"
are aiming to investigate.
Probably the biggest problem with web patterns is the term
"patttern". Most of us think about persian carpets or something when
we here the term. But it has a precise technical meaning in this
context, so I decided to go with it, despite the potential for
confusion.
Originally, when I was first thinking about this whole issue (years
ago now), I was thinking in terms of "templates". Reusable chunks,
much like you outlined in your earlier email. This is something which
Doug Bowman and I chatted about a lot in the aftermath of WE04, and
more recently Russ and I spoke more about, which took me more in the
direction of patterns over templates.
The drawback with shared templates is while these are immediately
useful, they are also trivial. In the sense that they can be
unthinkingly used, and by using them, no one gets anything other than
the short term benefit of a shortcut to a quicker page. Btu in real
world situations, while little reusable chunks are very useful, the
whole idea does not scale up well. One you reach even major page
fragments, they tend to become limiting, so people would bend them to
suit their needs, and all of a sudden you don't actually get the
benefits of reusable chunks anymore.
How do patterns differ? Well, a pattern (such as "login box")
certainly should include an example implementation, even a
"canonical" one, but more importantly, would also outline the
typical use cases for the pattern
other patterns which work well with this pattern
patterns which this pattern plays a part in
when NOT to use the pattern (simple example, radio buttons and
checkboxes are often used interchangeably - but they are separate
patterns, radio buttons should not be used when you want to choose
more than one option out of three)
Semantics - the pieces of the pattern all have usable semantic names
- in the login example, the whole chunk itself would have a name,
then each of the individual pieces may have names - so you get common
semantics for "free" - that way you can all of a sudden reuse CSS as
well as HTML. Cool eh?
So along with resuable code, you a whole wealth of knowledge which
has ben acquired by developers over time (an important thing about
patterns is that they aren't novel inventions, rather, they capture
and formalize well established current practice - they "pave the
cowpaths")
Hope this helps make more sense of the aim of web patterns - at
http://webpatterns.org and with the patternquiz there, I started in a
top down way - but the bottom up way would work well too.
I invite anyone vaguely interested to visit webpatterns.org, and ion
particular share their thoughts via the patternQuiz (there are two
parts now)
http://webpatterns.org/wordpress/?cat=3
thanks
john
John Allsopp
style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher
Web Essentials web development conference :: http://we05.com
WebPatterns :: http://webpatterns.org
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