The Joomla!^® User Experience Portal

@Joss

VQMod is something I've been wondering about in the back of my mind for a while, as to whether it would be something good for Joomla . . . . . so seeing as someone else has brought it up . . . may as well throw in my two cents.

It is great in Opencart (& Aceshop) - have been using it and now try to use with all my Opencart mods. It is awesome and there IS a wizard type system to help with dev (see previous code.google link).

Remember, dev's are the ones supposed to be doing dev, so having something this easy to use will make development faster and easier. As it "should" be used to extend core functionality and only affects small parts "within files" it is less likely to break through core upgrades and such.

PLUS - easy to use, less likely to break, all previous . .
BAD - override system already exists - should we only use one, or having more than one OK?

Morning Max

Okay, I apologise, but you have made me think this even further.

Interesting point about different override systems. I am not sure that it really matters that there is more than one way to skin this particular cat (sorry, unintentional skinning pun!) It has a lot to do with how a developer is comfortable working. And the current system only allows a certain level of overrides - something like VQMOD can, theoretically, allow overrides of ANY Joomla core file, should you wish to stand the entire system on its head.

Yes, I had noticed the basic Wizard, which is useful, though it could be taken further and allow you to browse for files and other pain-relieving operations, but perhaps that is better done in the guise of an IDE.

When I am not playing with Joomla, I like playing with Liferay. Liferay is a HUGE portal beast that is immensely powerful and incredibly versatile. It allows you to override any file you like by creating Hooks and external systems so that you can (if you are mad enough) override just about the entire system.

This is helped by a really decent IDE (which runs on Eclipse) which does a lot of the work for you. You want to create a template? Okay, click create template and all the core files and folder structure is created for you. You can now copy anything you want to change, create little snippets of new CSS, or however you want to work. Want to rewrite how the user management system works entirely? Fine, create a hook and get stuck in. The hook might just change the layout of a form, or it may make the user system use a totally different DB table of a different make and on a different server ... up to you.

This takes even templating to a new level since you can very easily work your way down through all the elements that come with the system (multiple boards, wikis, document management, social tools, CMSs, etc) and fine tune each part bit by bit. Should you wish to go that far.

VQMOD (or a similar system) opens the possibility of doing this more efficiently still using its very fine grained approach of replacing snippets rather than entire scripts.

Maybe, with J!3 we should be looking at not so much what templates should be available, but creating an IDE that runs on something like Eclipse that can allow developers to create not just templates but hooks and plugins - all with the same system. It would be a unified approach that gives developers (and non-techy writers like me) unlimited flexibility while making sure that there is some hope of still upgrading their system as and when that is required.

So, J3 would come with some basic, modern template that means it works out of the box, and the IDE gives you the opportunity of diving straight in to make major changes by giving you a fixed starting point.

Any very techy Devs in here fancy starting an IDE working group?


Joss

(Note, I am not a developer, so I would not know how to start this, but I am great at judging whether something is usable by a broad audience)

@Joss - It is possible (but not promoted) to override nearly any file in Joomla. A Joomla template can be simply an index.php file and probably some CSS. I don't see what benefit an IDE can have except to autogenerate files that are not needed.

Hi gnomeontherun

Well, I was thinking past just templating really.

The Liferay IDE has three main systems:

• Creating Templates - (it creates the basic folder structure and leaves the rest to you, though I think it will grow with closer integration to things like icefaces)

• Creating Portlets/extensions - It includes systems for creating new database tables or connecting to additional databases (Liferay does not have to use only one database or even only one flavour of database - you could use MySQL for some parts, then link other parts into your companies oracle database if you wished), utilising and extending existing data, creating the portlet structure, using the Alloy UI system that Liferay uses and so on.

• Creating Hooks - basically, rebuilding major parts of the core system to suit your own needs.

Now, all of these things can be done without an IDE, but the IDE has become very popular with developers because it keeps everything tightly structured and includes systems for collaborative working using GIT and so on. Also, since it runs on Eclipse, then it brings many of the eclipse tools into play seamlessly.

From my point of view, since I am not a developer (and don't speak a word of Java), it meant I could develop complicated templates where otherwise I would have been floundering.

gnomeontherun wrote:


So useless to have got too many CSS everywhere in our CMS.

The best core template is to be simpler than possible but with responsive, grid, fluid behaviour (minimal, if any, jquery).

Just seen another idea about simple site CSS (not joomla, but that's not a problem for us), please see: piira.se/projects/ingrid/