Either done, or progress made

Using both left and right side bars

Since I'll have to develop a new skin to get the full desired behavior for webs/subwebs, I've implemented an interim solution using both left and right side bars, which I can do right in NatSkin. -- HilaryHolz - 28 May 2008

This version uses WebComponents Ahat/AhatTWiki.WebSideBar and Ahat/AhatTWiki.WebRightBar. I realize that I didn't say that explicitly when I wrote the above, and it's hard to remember the exact name of the components with all the conflicting similar names floating around. -- HilaryHolz - 28 Jun 2008

palettes

• done:
  • selected topics (within this subweb)
  • tools
    • start a topic - invokes Ahat/AhatTWiki.WebCreateNewTopic (with templates)
    • update 'selected topics' - invokes editor on the selected topics list
    • list topics
    • recent changes
    • web stats
    • notify me
  • mysidebar or TWikiGuest's sidebar
    • mysidebar
      • WelcomeGuest
      • AhatTWiki Guidelines - get them going on sense-making
      • personalize this sidebar - invokes edit via alias save on template topic People.TWikiMySideBarTemplate, with argument %WIKINAME%SideBar
    • TWikiGuest's sidebar
      • firststart set to show (starts open)
      • Links
        • TWikiGuestSideBar - link to page displaying the sidebar itself, used to edit/update the sidebar
        • AhatTWiki Guidelines - keep them going on sense-making
        • ... (several empty links, to give them the hint)
        • ...
        • ...
      • Links
  • better orientation in the web and topic
    • in the previous version of the skin, the current web was listed at the top of the left sidebar. The name of the web was given out of context, however, so the info wasn't very useful. The current topic info was handled similarly. In the new version, the current web and current topic are handled differently. The current web is marked by inverted background/foreground coloring on the right sidebar, while the current topic will be marked the same way in the breadcrumbs.

• to do:
  • related topics (elsewhere in the twiki)
  • links (external)
  • borders and colors for visual chunking
  • smaller fonts for visual chunking

tighter layout

All of the default layouts for the default skins waste an incredible amount of valuable screen real estate on nothing, or, more to the point, information free graphics. Eliminating that wasted space frees up space that can be better used to create meaningful separation between content elements, such as the palettes listed above.

better open/close icons

We moved from toggleopen-mini and toggleclose-mini to toggleopen-small and toggleclose-small, because community members who were not interaction design oriented did not even see the minis. The low graphic skin is a real hit so far, far more popular than pattern skin, but the minis were essentially invisible to a lot of the community members.

better stats

I would like to improve the way stats works. Stats only really works right if it serves as a reference to a base web, which isn't explained well in the documentation. Hmmm, checking my code, I already use Ahatwiki to refer to the web of the including web, but that doesn't recurse down. This will have to get deferred a bit.

smarter search

It turns out that NatSearch may actually be a very good thing once we sort it out from an interaction design point of view. A nice design, but a fairly awful current user experience. The default, for instance, is to have NatSearch search locally, not globally. On a new twiki install that is sorting itself out that's the wrong default. Start global then go local. Oh, wait, that turns out to be a bug. These folks need a better testing framework.

That turns out to be relatively simple to fix, using the configuration variables from NatSearch. Note that the defaults documented in revision 3 of the NatSearch documentation are wrong - it defaults to being case sensitive.

login to current page

It isn't a good idea to use an ErrorDocument directive rather than mod_rewrite to configure NatSkin to use SSL (contrary to some documentation out there) because it prevents the %ORIGURL% template variable from doing its job.

Actually, this gets into the larger issue of a better Apache configuration file for TWiki as a whole, particularly with respect to integration with mod_sec. I've got a really nice one working and checked into our svn serverfiles project. I think I'll get that written up a bit and on the twiki.org site.

To Be Done

keeping in touch

• TWikiTipOfTheDay in the Skin, so visible everywhere, also put our tips in
• broadcast message - goes where?
• SubscribeAddOn?

universal design

• alt text
• tab order
• quick keys, hierarchical

• headlines?
• rev control (better than diffs)