Discussion: Pluggable preferences/profile screen

[Bruno Busco]

Hi all,
while writing the compact header we had to define which links to have
available to the user in the compact header itself.
The "profile" link would seem to be a good candidate (quite standard) but,
since the viewprofile page is now external to the framework, this offers the
occasion to think about the viewprofile and the preference page itself.

I have the idea that the profile/preference page could be pluggable.
It is quite common that new components have some new preferences to offer to
the user.
Having the profile/preference page pluggable we could let other applications
to add their specific elements to the standard preference pages content.

The standard "preference" page, defined in the framework, should let the
user to change his name, e-mail, password, locale language, timezone,
VisualTheme etc.
Additional applications-defined preferences will be added (in a way to be
defined) and shown to the user in the same page of the standard preferences
or the like.
A possible way to plug application-specific preferences could be that
application "registers" its own preferences pages adding the path to locally
defined preferences screen into a globally framework-defined array.
This array could be used by the framework preference page to populate a
TabBarMenu so that all applications preferences will be available at one
place.

What do you think about?
Thanks,
-Bruno

[Bruno Busco]

Thinking more about this may be the same concept of pluggability could be
used in the MyPage component.
Every application could register in some way several own screens that will
then all available to the user in the MyPage.
Using the enable/disable checkboxes the user coud configure its "MyPage"
picking up things from applications in an application-driven way.
-Bruno

2008/8/15 Bruno Busco <[hidden email]>

> Hi all,
> while writing the compact header we had to define which links to have
> available to the user in the compact header itself.
> The "profile" link would seem to be a good candidate (quite standard) but,
> since the viewprofile page is now external to the framework, this offers the
> occasion to think about the viewprofile and the preference page itself.
>
> I have the idea that the profile/preference page could be pluggable.
> It is quite common that new components have some new preferences to offer
> to the user.
> Having the profile/preference page pluggable we could let other
> applications to add their specific elements to the standard preference pages
> content.
>
> The standard "preference" page, defined in the framework, should let the
> user to change his name, e-mail, password, locale language, timezone,
> VisualTheme etc.
> Additional applications-defined preferences will be added (in a way to be
> defined) and shown to the user in the same page of the standard preferences
> or the like.
> A possible way to plug application-specific preferences could be that
> application "registers" its own preferences pages adding the path to locally
> defined preferences screen into a globally framework-defined array.
> This array could be used by the framework preference page to populate a
> TabBarMenu so that all applications preferences will be available at one
> place.
>
> What do you think about?
> Thanks,
> -Bruno
>

[David E Jones]

While it wouldn't make sense for most of OFBiz, for the MyPage stuff a
portal framework would be really valuable. Many of the things you
describe here are basically what a portal framework does (ie the JSR 168
type of stuff). Other things would have to be added on to make things
happen automatically based on other stuff in OFBiz, ie some integration
stuff, but it might be a good idea. There is even a decent little portal
that is an Apache project...

-David


On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 12:41 +0200, Bruno Busco wrote:

> Thinking more about this may be the same concept of pluggability could be
> used in the MyPage component.
> Every application could register in some way several own screens that will
> then all available to the user in the MyPage.
> Using the enable/disable checkboxes the user coud configure its "MyPage"
> picking up things from applications in an application-driven way.
> -Bruno
>
> 2008/8/15 Bruno Busco <[hidden email]>
>
> > Hi all,
> > while writing the compact header we had to define which links to have
> > available to the user in the compact header itself.
> > The "profile" link would seem to be a good candidate (quite standard) but,
> > since the viewprofile page is now external to the framework, this offers the
> > occasion to think about the viewprofile and the preference page itself.
> >
> > I have the idea that the profile/preference page could be pluggable.
> > It is quite common that new components have some new preferences to offer
> > to the user.
> > Having the profile/preference page pluggable we could let other
> > applications to add their specific elements to the standard preference pages
> > content.
> >
> > The standard "preference" page, defined in the framework, should let the
> > user to change his name, e-mail, password, locale language, timezone,
> > VisualTheme etc.
> > Additional applications-defined preferences will be added (in a way to be
> > defined) and shown to the user in the same page of the standard preferences
> > or the like.
> > A possible way to plug application-specific preferences could be that
> > application "registers" its own preferences pages adding the path to locally
> > defined preferences screen into a globally framework-defined array.
> > This array could be used by the framework preference page to populate a
> > TabBarMenu so that all applications preferences will be available at one
> > place.
> >
> > What do you think about?
> > Thanks,
> > -Bruno
> >