[TYPO3-hci] master plan for backend redesign? - CURRENT HCI STATUS

[Benjamin Mack]

Hey Christian,

AFAIK the "backend redesign" is a task for v5. This is supervised by 
Robert after some HCI specialists including Jens met a couple of months ago.

Once these new concepts are worked out, we're going to adopt them for v4 
as much as possible (at least that's my plan ;-)).

For v4, this doesn't mean, we're not doing anything though until then. 
We're trying to get more practical these days and I decided to split up 
certain HCI topics that were on the todo list for too long into smaller 
chunks. As far as I have the overview, this is what our current plan is:

[MAJOR TASK]
New default skin: Phase out "oldskin" (the one when you uninstall t3skin)

   - split up typo3/stylesheet.css into "layout.css" and "colors.css"
   - create a new extension "oldskin" and copy the "colors.css" in there
   - copy all icons from typo3/gfx/ into the new extension and overload 
them with $TBE_STYLES (thus it is safe that we can replace typo3/gfx/
   - probably redefine some colors
   - If everything works fine, it should be possible to first install 
t3skin, and then "oldskin" and then the BE should look exactly like 
t3ksin wasn't even installed.
   - Next step: Move "oldskin" to TER and replace all icons in 
typo3/gfx/ with the appropriate ones from t3skin, replace colors.css 
with the CSS from t3skin.

[MAJOR TASK]
Naming Consistency - Icons and CSS classes

   - Creating a document on what CSS classes to use in the TYPO3 Backend
   - Create CSS definitions for all of these classes and go through the 
whole TYPO3 core to apply these CSS classes
   - Create a document on how the icon files should look like
   - Add new icons (sent by Jens already in Mar 2008), make em grouped 
in sprites.
   - Go through the Core and make use of the new icon files, probably 
adding new PHP functions to replace the skinImg() method to a more 
flexible way


[MAJOR TASK]
Ext JS integration

   - Create a Ext JS skin that adopts styling from the current t3skin


[MAJOR TASK]
Layout Consistency

   - Define "main" TYPO3 colors for the backend, put them in the new 
style guide
   - Go through the whole Core and see if there are inconsistencies, add 
new APIs where needed to give a more consistent look&feel.


Then we have some small jobs like the new installer theme and the login 
screen that are currently being worked on.


If everything goes smoothly we can connect these tasks with our new 
programming possibilities to get the Backend up and running with ExtBase 
& Fluid, bringing in some concepts from v5 (where possible), and finally 
having a consistent look&feel with a good style guide people can depend on.

The "backend redesign" for v4 in my eyes is exactly the sum of all these 
smaller tasks listed above. Once we have set up these prerequisites, it 
should be simple enough for anybody to do whatever he wants with the 
backend ;-).


As for the HCI team itself, I consider Jens being the one directing new 
designs and the new concepts and myself as the one making small tasks 
out of it and supervising them. So, if you're motivated to work on one 
of the tasks above, lemme know or write it down on this list, so we can 
work things out together. I'd be happy to give advice on how to start!

All the best,
Benni.



On 08.06.2009 8:32 Uhr, "Christian Müller (Kitsunet)" wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just wanted to ask if it makes sense at all to write down concepts and
> ideas for a different (hopefully better) backend or is there already a
> master plan or vision inside some HCI team members heads and just the
> visual work has to be done? If not I will work together with someone
> without a technical background on a few ideas and drop them in here.
>
> cheers
> Christian