Re: Component Editor

From: David Avendasora (webobject..vendasora.com)
Date: Thu Jul 17 2008 - 14:16:34 EDT

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    On Jul 17, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Chuck Hill wrote:

    >
    > On Jul 17, 2008, at 8:36 AM, David Avendasora wrote:
    >
    >> Hi Mike,
    >>
    >> Thanks again for going through all the stuff last night at the
    >> WONOVA meeting. I really like getting the behind the scenes look at
    >> what could be coming up with the dev tools.
    >>
    >> I'm copying this to the WOProject list because I think others may
    >> have valuable input on this as well.
    >>
    >> Andrew Kinnie and I had a couple beers (I know, shocking)
    >
    > Only shocking if you stopped at two.

    Well, by the time Mike stopped talking ... there wasn't much time for
    drinking. I must remember that parallel is a much better strategy as
    compared to serial for such activities. Especially when drinking beer
    is involved, and really especially if you don't give Mike a time
    limit. Not that I'm complaining! The lack of beer-drinking time was
    entirely my own fault and Mike's demo/talk was fascinating. There's
    just no reason to choose one over the other.

    >
    >> after the meeting last night and we started discussing some of the
    >> stuff you went over last night and your desire to make WOLips as
    >> beginning-user-friendly as possible. We came up with a few things
    >> that, from our perspective, are the confusing or daunting aspects
    >> of WO development for the beginner.
    >>
    >> Now that the tools are getting much more polished in their look and
    >> feel, the big barrier to WO-newbies is now becoming questions like
    >> "Which EOGenerator should I use?" and "Do I want Apple or Wonder
    >> Inline Bindings?", let alone "What the heck are Inline-bindings?".
    >> Right now, once a new developer decides to use WebObjects they are
    >> faced with so many subsequent questions that there is no way they
    >> can possibly have the answer to yet, and no matter what they pick
    >> someone is going to suggest doing it differently. On top of that,
    >> it's only getting more complicated with two different kinds of AJAX
    >> soon to be available.
    >>
    >> We think there are a couple key things that could streamline this
    >> process for WOnder applications.
    >>
    >> 1) Fully embrace WOnder in a WOnder App. Make the default setup of
    >> a WOnder application implement click-to-open and as many of the
    >> other WOnder technologies as possible right out of the starting-
    >> gate. If someone wants to pick-and-choose the pieces of WOnder that
    >> they use, let them start with a standard WO application and add
    >> things from there, or remove unwanted things from the default
    >> WOnder app. Don't make the default a half-way thing!
    >
    > +1
    >
    >
    >> 2) Hide the Binding Style form the beginner. Abstract the
    >> modification of Components using a "projection" as you talked about
    >> last night. The editing UI for editiing a Component would be the
    >> same for all tag styles (inline, WOD or mixed) and WOLips would
    >> take care of making the modifications to the HTML or WOD. You could
    >> always edit them directly with a text editor if you're anal like
    >> that, but the default editor would completely hide where the
    >> bindings are being written. A preference change could change where
    >> bindings were written, but it wouldn't change the editing UI. This,
    >> combined with the drag-and-drop binding functionality would make
    >> Component Editor much less complicated for the beginner, but still
    >> allow the advanced developer to do what they need to.
    >
    > Not really sure what Mike is on about, but +1 anyway.

    The basic idea is that there is no reason a newbie developer even
    needs to know how the bindings are stored, just how to set and modify
    them. The actual storage of the bindings can be completely hidden by
    the way Eclipse works.

    >> 3) Make the Bindings tab part of the WOLips perspective by default.
    >
    > +1
    >
    >> 4) (this one's mine, and I brought it up before but haven't yet
    >> added a feature request for it) Watch what classes the focus is on
    >> in the .java editor and instead of having the Related tab showing
    >> just the EOModel, have it show and possibly make available for
    >> editing, the EOModel properties, attributes and relationships, etc.
    >> for the selected class's entity, which would help break the
    >> disconnect between the model and the class, and likely greatly
    >> reduce the amount of times you need to actually open the whole
    >> model (and therefor switch perspectives - which can be quite
    >> disturbing to Eclipse newbies).
    >
    > Interesting idea!
    >
    >
    >> What do other developers, especially beginners, think?

    Come on you beginner lurkers out there, I can hear your breathing.
    Questions? Ideas?

    >>
    >> After some discussion, I'll be happy to submit feature requests.
    >
    >
    > Not much discussion here! :-)

    I think I liked you better on coffee. You were more wordful.

    Dave



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