koha head and prog templates
I've just donwloaded the PROG templates owen made, and have some comments. They are not nice. But that's not a problem. they are not supposed to be nice ;-) The main problem, according to me is that they are poor in useability. So, what to do ? we can : - Continue with prog, but I would not be happy at all with this solution - Drop them and go on with default. I would not really be happy with this solution either, as I agree that Koha 3.0 would not be nicer than 2.2 if we don't change the templates ! - Try to improve useability of PROG ? that's probably a way to follow. in my idea, the PROG templates should give a framework for template designers AND, through a stylesheet, be the default templates. My opinion is based on the number of templates the librarian interface has (more than 100). I think it would be better to have strong, nice, stable and maintained templates for librarian interface, plus a framework for libraries that want specific ones. I've seen some specific templates made by katipo, that are really nice. maybe liblime has some too. We should choose one and go with it, I think. my suggestion : Every template system could be described by the following elements : - a header, on top of the page. - a menu, on top of the page too or on the left. - a navigator bar, saying what we did before (Koha >> cataloguing >> serials >> add subscription for example), with link to go "up". - the main part of the page (the content) - the footer. If we divide the PROG templates in those 5 parts i think we would have something useable AND easy to make evolve. However, i'll follow RM decision ;-) (if you think this mail contains things unordered ideas, questions, thoughts... I fully agree ;-) ) -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
Paul POULAIN a écrit : > I've just donwloaded the PROG templates owen made, and have some comments. continuing thinking on the list... I did not dream the solution last night, but have some comments after investigating a little bit more. It seems that the PROG templates contains a lot of copy/paste from default ones. The copy/paste is related to the "core" of each page, I mean the "center" of the screen, it's main content. Every graphical improvement being removed. I've looked inside acquire.tmpl, aqbudget.tmpl and circulation.tmpl, except for header and footer, they almost are a copy of default templates. That confirms what I wrote yesterday and can describe a little bit more, I think it's a way to explore. A page contains : * a header at the top. * a main menu (top or left usually). Always the same everywhere in the app. * a title * a contextual menu. contains every operations doable on this page (like "add a biblio", "see biblio in another format", "edit items", "add biblio to virtual shelf"...) * a navigation toolbar. Saying we were "Koha >> acquisition >> supplier >> recieve >> search order". * a footer, at the end of the page. * the core content. The core content contains usually : - lists (tables) of informations - one or few forms - only a few buttons and/or links. that can be grouped in 1 or few logical blocs. Couldn't we define this structure as the mandatory structure for PROG templates ? then, the developpers would have to "tag" their structure with code like <core num="1">xxxx</core num="2"> on logical blocs. We would then have to developp a script to copy every 'core' blocs in another template system. We also could add a tag for dest template system to say 'hey dude, i've modified a core bloc, don't overwritte it, i'll take care of it manually'. With a warning during template upgrade. That might be a good solution, except that the core bloc will be the same for everybody. Attached is a sample of what it could be for circulation.tmpl (randomly choosen template). I also have added a name="xxx" in the core to explain what the bloc is done for, and stored core tag as html comment. Does that sound a good idea ? -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
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Paul POULAIN