[Mapbender-dev] [gsoc09] more static Admin GUI

[Karim Malhas]

Christoph Baudson schrieb:
> karim@ schrieb:
>> Dear List,
>>
>> I was wondering:
>>
>> The admin GUIs are defined the same way as the mapbenderframes/divs, by
>> adding elements in mod_editElements.php.
>>
>> How important is it that it stays this way?
>>   
> 
> As far as I know the most important aspect of the GUI approach wrt the 
> admin interfaces is the rights management. You can easily grant a user 
> access to a admin GUI just like you do with another GUI. If we were to 
> abandon the GUI concept for admin interfaces, a new set of management 
> would be needed. I'm not sure if this would make Mapbender unnecessarily 
> complex and bloated. I find the simple GUI concept quite intriguing.

I am not so fond of it :-) and I should really try to explain the 
problem I am having, instead of just a solution:

The way the GUI is stored now, does not nicely allow for the 
construction of nested elements.

For example it is possible to create something like the following :

<ul>
  <li>bla</li>
  <li>blubb</li>
</ul>

in the element Editor, by setting starttag and enddtag to "ul" and 
filling the "content" property with the "li"s
But this becomes more cumbersome when the content is more complex, and 
it is not possible to include one element within another.

"admin2"  solves this by absolutely positioning all elements on the 
page, giving each it's own inline style.
This makes the resulting html document look messy, and ignores the 
capabilities of CSS.

If I read the code correctly, and theres a good chance I am not, rights 
are determined on the server side.
It should therefore be easy to remove these parts of a "static admin 
gui" to which a user has no access.

What remains is the look of the gui and someone might also want to 
create a GUI that contain only a subset, of the available functionality.
This can be achieved by adding CSS rules.

So, in a way I am not actually arguing for a completey static admin 
interface, but rather a change of how it is done.

My Idea being: start with everything, and take away what is unneccessary,
whereas the current way is to start from 0 and just add what is neccessary.



> I assume we can build the administration interface you suggested with 
> the current approach. If you see problems, please let us know.

Possibly quite true. I will do my best.

/kmq