Ticket #194 (new enhancement)
Eliminate dialogs
| Reported by: | wymmy | Owned by: | jf.hovinne |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | major | Milestone: | 2.0 |
| Component: | ui | Version: | trunk |
| Keywords: | Cc: | shaliko@… |
Description
A lot of people seem to be annoyed with the popup dialogs in WYMeditor. Someone came up with jQuery UI integration, but it really only redirects the problem AND adds another heavy dependency. This is the user-interface issue at hand: Users don't like popups of any sort - they distract and detract from a website.
Instead of integrating dialogs of any sort, embed the contents of the dialog and its options into the editor itself. The "Toggle HTML" button already does something like this.
An example implementation of this could be: Click on the "hyperlink" icon and the form appears above the editor just like the Toggle HTML button does (only it shows a form instead of code). Click the "OK" button and it hides the div and performs the appropriate action.
Implementing this could also allow you to rewrite chunks of the dialog interface. The handlers (e.g. the code that sits in INIT_DIALOG) for each button should really be in self-contained functions so they can individually be overridden. It should also be easier to inject and handle additional options within the new proposed interface for both creating buttons and modifying existing buttons to do additional tasks.
This approach eliminates a whole slew of user interface and browser communication issues AND eliminates the dialog issue altogether (plus no dependency on jQuery UI to function). You could even call it a feature: No dialogs! In addition, it may end up resulting in a smaller footprint - that is, WYMeditor has a pretty good chance of being even faster.
We're already planing on rewriting the UI for 0.6. Among other things there'll be a new dialogue api, allowing people to write their own dialogue handlers. ;)
However, it's to early to tell exactly how the standard UI will look, and what components will be used.
What I can say is that - without doubt - the dialogues (and the UI as a whole) will be a lot better than in the current version. The UI will be modular and decoupled from the inner workings of WYM, more flexible, a lot easier to extend and/or modify, better looking, and so forth.
I'm hoping to release a design proposal, as well as a roadmap, and some other documents in the beginning of next year.