[TYPO3-hci] a newcomer's introduction and TSref

[Silke Arend]

Hi everybody,

may I introduce myself briefly:

My name is Silke Arend. I am living close to Frankfurt, Germany. With a background of business administration and a broad working experience as a manager with different medium size companies, I started my own business about 2 years ago. I call it "external management", emphasizing my willingness and ability to not only provide for - hopefully good - advice, but at the same time to get involved in actually doing the work, for a specific period of time or project.

While working on a big project, I started to develop an organization system on the basis of MS Office. Later on I decided to offer an alternative, to be used via browser. That is where my journey with Typo3 started. This was December 2005. Besides - or despite - the moments of frustration, I am really excited about Typo3. And I would be glad to become an active member of the community - amazing thing that it is!

By the way: I have very limited programming knowledge, but at least a good understanding of (X)HTML and CSS. Some day I might start with PHP, but for now I need to focus on other issues. Meanwhile I started using Typo3 for webdesign as well.


On my journey to becoming an efficient site developer I am probably encoutering some of the typical problems of a newbie, one of them being the mysterious world called "TSref". For some - or maybe even most of you - the TSref might be clear and easy to use. Since we are here to talk about usablility (for site developers in this case), please, allow me to say: I feel like a complete idiot most of the time I am trying to find something there. I still haven't even figured out the structure of the whole thing...

After having enjoyed a two day training on TypoScript I did some thinking (... happens sometimes ;-)  )

I scanned the relevant mailing lists - please, bear with me, if I missed out an important part. AFAIK there are no specific plans of a redesign of TSref yet. - I don't know how to interpret the solution "Kill all references! All properties are inherently known and exposed by the code itself!" (http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Usability_Target_Groups).

True to my introduction, I am not only suggesting a redesign of TSref (especially the online version) but at the same time offering to take part in that. It might sound strange after having admitted my ignorance when it comes to TSref. Yet this is a chance as well: because of my lack of knowledge I am more aware of the need visual helpers and so on.

Such an optimization could be divided into layout-issues and work on the content (especially adding descriptions and / or links to relevant, helpful online resources). Improvement of the layout could be done independent of the work on the content. In other words: It would bring benefits even before the content would be enhanced.


I don't want to go into details too much, before I know your opinion on that. But here are a few aspects I would like to suggest:

links: all "keywords" (objects, properties...) are displayed as links - leading to the definition and basic description of the term

colours and symbols: display objects, properties, functions etc. each in a specific colour and add a specific letter, each time they are mentionend (the latter to allow for specific search and for further use in terms of accessibility)

visualization: use other tools, like displaying examples in a different font

best use of screen: flexible layout, using full screen width (with max width at a certain value to prevent lines from becoming to long)

improved search: a search area limited to TSref with additional elements (see indexing, DB approach)

indexing: adding some keywords or synonyms to each description of a term; e.g. 
TMENU: text menu, navigation; stdWrap: wrapping, wrapper, standard wrap

DB approach: possibly use different fields for "property", "description" etc., combined with a specific search function; thereby allowing for more precise search, e.g. limited to the property-field


Since my posting has already gotten longer then I had planned, I will not address specific issues referring to the content for now.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Silke