[Koha-devel] koha head and prog templates

[Paul POULAIN]

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)