Re: widgetx coming soon... maybe?

I wouldn't mind being CC'd on this, although I'm curious as to who you mean when you refer to reaching out to the ID/UX community.  As I see there are 2 basic sets of problems: those who are looking for desktop UI components on the web, and those who are looking to embrace more "webbish" concepts.  As it stands now, the Dojo widget system is definitely aimed at the former; I would definitely like to see the latter also embodied somehow...

I just don't see a lot of our widgets being used to build something like Flickr or Meebo, and I think we need to think about that pretty hard at some point.  Right now it seems like a lot of what we have is aimed more at the same crowd that would use 
ASP.NET et al to solve their problems, and I (for one) do not want Dojo to be pigeon-holed as that kind of thing only.

trt

On 10/29/06, Jesse Kuhnert <jkuhnert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

You don't have to CC me, but I'd love to be involved in whatever form of participation you find relevant. I am definitely getting a UX sort of bug under my skin a lot more lately so it's exactly the sort of thing I'd be really in to.

I know Tom is going to be into it as well. (and probably better at it than me ;) )

We'll have to be sure the contributing part from other groups becomes mutually beneficial enough for them that they want to do it...Ie obviously we all make $$ doing different things, and this would be sort of along those lines...Don't know what you had in mind but I don't see how we ~can't~ do it. Great idea. This is really a refreshing thing to here and I'm glad you are getting into it.

On 10/29/06, Alex Russell < alex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Actually, that was far too terse. Here's what I'm thinking:

1.) today, our widget set isn't truly "webish". This, in and of itself
isn't bad, but it may be a limiting factor going forward. It's not
anyone's "fault" that we have been building what amount to desktop
components that happen to run on the web, but we need to fill the gap
somehow.
2.) we aren't showing a ton of facility on our own in working through
the hard UX and ID problems that go along with evolving more "webish"
components, and that's OK too. I, for one, am a plumber, not a UX/ID
person. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get help, though.
3.) the Yahoo patterns library is a good start, but clearly not the
be-all and end-all of how widget libraries can contribute to solving UX
problems. There's a need for a much more UX/ID community driven project
to compare notes and come up with a set of problem statements,
canonical approaches, and recommendations about how toolkits like Dojo
can implement those recommendations.
4.) as that happens, we need to be engaged such that we can deliver the
components that get invented or iterated on in such a process. Also,
developer participation is a requirement such that we can speak up when
something isn't going to work from a technical perspective.

I had planned to reach out to folks in the ID/UX community this week and
see if we can't get some sort of agreement that this would be a good
thing to do. If there's some sort of critical mass around it, I'm going
to suggest the Dojo Foundation as a place to work, but I really don't
care where it gets done so long as it gets worked on and the resulting
documents/recommendations are licensed in a friendly way.

Jesse, should I CC you when I start these discussions?

Everyone else: good idea? bad idea?

Regards

On Sunday 29 October 2006 11:48 am, Alex Russell wrote:
> Do it in a branch.
>
> On Sunday 29 October 2006 9:41 am, Jesse Kuhnert wrote:
> > Once the trunk/branch situation gets finalized I'd like to start a
> > new subdirectory in the main tree for a little widget r&d. You may
> > see a couple widgets duplicated (in name only) here and there, but
> > it's not meant to be a competing sort of directory....Purely just
> > research and fact finding stuff.
> >
> > If you don't like the idea of doing it just shield your eyes and
> > pretend it isn't there. ;) Hopefully this will allow easy
> > collaboration with others while also not impacting the core widget
> > development tasks.
> >
> > I think a few of us have "an itch that needs itching" wrt to how a
> > few things regarding widgets/objects/etc are done, so this seems
> > like the ideal place to do it. If you are one of those people this
> > message is meant to start your gears turning in the interim.
> >
> > The goals of what are to be done here aren't clear or formalized
> > yet at all, so don't bother trying to pin anything down. It's just
> > a general idea of "there has to be a better way". I know it's not
> > stuff that fixes any one particular bug, but I've found that
> > refactorings like this one tend to have side effects of fixing
> > large globs of bugs without even knowing it.
> >
> > Generally speaking, my personal goals here are to :
> >
> > -) Reduce and compact the widget code by finding ways of re-using
> > common blocks to do internal things...Maybe mix-ins will do well
> > here. Not sure.
> >
> > -) Make the widget system & rendering of widgets "as fast as
> > possible".
> >
> > -) Create and enforce some common styles of how to do things via a
> > set of shared/common behaviors that people can expect. Simple
> > things like escape key handling/whether or not to mangle or re-use
> > existing html/etc...
> >
> > Probably more but there's too much potential to say for sure. I
> > don't want to own the new subdir, just get it started so people
> > interested can all collaborate and help figure this stuff out
> > without traumatizing the current widget infrastructure.

--
Alex Russell
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--
Jesse Kuhnert
Tapestry/Dojo/(and a dash of TestNG), team member/developer

Open source based consulting work centered around dojo/tapestry/tacos/hivemind. http://blog.opencomponentry.com

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