[jira] [Created] (OFBIZ-5040) Widget & Application HTML clean-up

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

Paul Piper created OFBIZ-5040:
---------------------------------

             Summary: Widget & Application HTML clean-up
                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
             Project: OFBiz
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
            Reporter: Paul Piper


I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.

To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.

This task is hence to:
* Find a consensus on a new widget standard
* Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
* Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules

Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13458701#comment-13458701 ]

Adrian Crum commented on OFBIZ-5040:
------------------------------------

This type of cleanup has been done before - around 2007. The current HTML structures and CSS styles were the result of that cleanup. New HTML structures and CSS styles are always welcome, and the success of the effort will depend on rallying support for them.

For reference, here are the Wiki pages that describe the current widget markup:

https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBADMIN/html-and-css-best-practices.html

https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBIZ/ofbiz-maincsscss-html-element-collection-styles.html

               

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13458711#comment-13458711 ]

Adrian Crum commented on OFBIZ-5040:
------------------------------------

By the way, there are deprecated CSS styles still left over from the previous cleanup. Look in the Flat Grey theme, maincss.css file, line 1913.

               

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13458716#comment-13458716 ]

Paul Piper commented on OFBIZ-5040:
-----------------------------------

Thanks for the feedback. Those are the ones that I am refering to. The biggest issue is that apps often introduce new html rather than rehashing the available. This is probably due to the fact that most are not really using the existing macros and rather reinvent everything, which makes it all the more difficult to work with. So my idea was to go over the application ftls at some point and reworking them to use the proper macros instead. Otherwise I fear that we will never get to fix this beast.
               

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13458720#comment-13458720 ]

Adrian Crum commented on OFBIZ-5040:
------------------------------------

Maybe a good start would be to just delete the deprecated styles from the style sheets - which will break the layout, and hopefully compel everyone to use the correct styles. As long as the deprecated styles can be found, someone will use them in new code.


               

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13458720#comment-13458720 ]

Adrian Crum edited comment on OFBIZ-5040 at 9/20/12 1:31 AM:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe a good start would be to just delete the deprecated styles from the style sheets - which will break the layout, and hopefully compel everyone to use the correct styles. As long as the deprecated styles can be found, someone will use them in new code.

The FTL code you are referring to might be files that were never touched in the previous cleanup. So yes, fixing those files would be a worthwhile effort.


               
      was (Author: [hidden email]):
    Maybe a good start would be to just delete the deprecated styles from the style sheets - which will break the layout, and hopefully compel everyone to use the correct styles. As long as the deprecated styles can be found, someone will use them in new code.


                 

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

[Nicolas Malin (Jira)]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13459379#comment-13459379 ]

Deepak Dixit commented on OFBIZ-5040:
-------------------------------------

Paul could you please let us which pattern will use for widget rendering?
First will have to decide the new pattern for widget rendering then will change the ftl and form widget macros to use that pattern.
As per current pattern ofbiz using table for rendering the back-office.
               

> Widget & Application HTML clean-up
> ----------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFBIZ-5040
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-5040
>             Project: OFBiz
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: ALL APPLICATIONS
>            Reporter: Paul Piper
>              Labels: html, webapp, widget, widgetrendering
>
> I am sure that this is a common thing to know: the current backoffice application relies heavily on widgets. This is good, but the current standard-html-structure is not flexible enough and often lacks proper w3c implementation.
> To make matters worse, you can often find applications avoiding widgets at all and rather overriding the standards with custom ftl implementations. It is these customizations that break the html on numerous screens and make it difficult, if not tedious to create new themes for the backoffice.
> This task is hence to:
> * Find a consensus on a new widget standard
> * Go over each of the application ftls and convert these to the new standard
> * Recreate the themes and simplify/clean-up special rules
> Since redoing the theme is a rather large task, we should consider to add an additional css for now which stylises the replacement html instead of working with the old.

--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira