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#37 2015-08-10 18:18:29

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,269
Website GitHub

Re: WTF do we need form types for?

maverick wrote #294050:

page/form/css name on the left, and a used by to the right, with every place it is used listed.

In the current implementation of the Themes panel, if you hit the Show detail checkbox, you get three additional columns showing you the number of Pages, Forms and Stylesheets assigned to that Theme. Each number is hyperlinked to the relevant panel which filters the list based on the Theme so you can see at a glance what’s used.

It doesn’t list individual assets all on one panel so you can’t easily see what’s shared, but it’s consistent with other UI paradigms we have about the patch (e.g. to show the Comments assigned to an Article, or to show Articles assigned to a Section). Anything above this feels like plugin territory to me, but I can be swayed if there’s a compelling argument.

Regarding potential support issues, once you’ve picked a Theme to work on (i.e. chosen one from the dropdown on either the Pages, Forms or Styles panels) it’s remembered as you navigate around the place so all you see on each panel are the assets assigned to the currently selected Theme.

Also, on the Sections panel, you see the Theme name in addition to the Page and Stylesheet in use in the columns of the table. Again, you can click on the Theme name which’ll (currently) take you to the Themes panel with that one filtered (and shows all the asset counts too) and sets the Theme you chose to be the one currently being edited (at least I think that’s what I did: will need to check).

I’m hoping these two UI hints in tandem will minimise confusion because you pick what you want to work on and it remains current until you change it.

Any enhancements on this UI workflow I’ll consider if it makes sense to the majority of users, bearing in mind that most will probably only have one or, at most, two Themes installed anyway.


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#38 2015-08-10 19:02:50

maverick
Member
From: Southeastern Michigan, USA
Registered: 2005-01-14
Posts: 976
Website

Re: WTF do we need form types for?

I should have know you would be way ahead on this, Stef. :)

That sounds like enough, and better. Since most will only have one theme, or maybe two, and there will be few shared forms/css, my brainstorming was overkill. This is much more elegant given actual use cases.

Thank you for describing it. I need find time to play with the new version :)

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#39 2015-08-10 21:23:25

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,269
Website GitHub

Re: WTF do we need form types for?

maverick wrote #294064:

That sounds like enough, and better. Since most will only have one theme, or maybe two, and there will be few shared forms/css, my brainstorming was overkill.

Actually, there’s one more anti-feature I forgot to mention. If you have only one Theme installed, it looks identical to how it does now. No additional UI widgets anywhere except for the Themes panel and the name of the theme in the Sections panel columns. The dropdowns elsewhere all disappear since you have Hobson’s choice.

I need find time to play with the new version :)

Yes please. Would like to hear your thoughts on the branch. But note that I still need Phil to do some CSS work and/or suggest a position/suitable markup for the (currently mostly obscured) Theme dropdowns. And I haven’t added the file system sync stuff yet as it’s only partially implemented on my local box at the moment.


The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.

Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp

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