Re: widgetx coming soon... maybe?

P.S. Don't forget about http://lukew.com/ . If you're going to reach out you may as well go after all the goodies.

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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