[TYPO3-hci] GUI Toolkit Qooxdoo

[Franz Koch]

Hi Patrick,
>> first. I just stumbled over this list and find it very interessting. 
>> Unfortunately I'm to late to join the team :(
> 
> Why?

I read somewhere that the group working on this is "closed" or something like that.

> The meaning of my posting about Qooxdoo is not to promote this 
> framework, but the way they did it. TYPO3 lacks a GUI framework, and in 
> my opinion we need one. Most of the things done by Qooxdoo can also be 
> done with PHP, which I prefer also, together with AJAX. Don't let there 
> be a misunderstanding about that. Qooxdoo is a good place to start with 
> when building a GUI framework. They thought about a lot of functionality 
>  that has to be in a framework, which we can adopt, be it in PHP/AJAX. 
> Have a look at their API to see what I mean.

Sorry - I misunderstood your post and totally agree with the missing GUI framework.

> I see a lot of advantages working with a GUI framework. All backend page 
> building will be done through this framework, which makes it very easy 
> to change the skins and the interfaces, because it will be all done OO, 
> server and client side. Right now there is only little support in some 
> classes to use some 'GUI' functionality. For instance, backend modules 
> almost always have their layout hardcoded, which is not preferrable. 
> It's all about consistency and reusability.

+1

> DHTML/Web2.0 stuff are not only nice gimmics. It makes the backend work 
> faster, especially with AJAX. Pages are not reloaded completely. Another 
> advantage is you can give the user the functionality of applications 
> they're already used to, like drag and drop, column resizing in tables 
> for better views, the way menu bars are handled etc. TYPO3 needs to 
> adopt the functionality users know from other applications, not 
> inventing other ways to do it.

I know how AJAX works and it's advantages - but it always should be optional in my eyes. And I don't agree that Typo3 "needs" to adopt functionality. It "should" adopt functionality where it is suitable and use own or modified functionality where it's necessary.

Speaking of a faster backend. XHTML is also a point I'd like to see in a future BE where the pagetree is a nice nested UL etc. I allready tryed hacking the pagetree rendering, but didn't get it work as inteded (had problems with the php-code). But I know that it works, as ezPublish shows and maybe many other CMS and applications.

> The GUI framework can always be enhanced, according to the wishes of 
> developers. If they invent something that can be usefull in the GUI 
> framework, we have to embed it.

It'll be good if the framework would be something like a service but with the possibility to configure the framework on BE-user/BE-group basis (which templates, which service-part a 'renderlet' should use,...).

-- 
Kind regards,
Franz Koch