[pmwiki-users] Feature request: Action lists in skins

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Tue Apr 5 13:29:23 CDT 2005


At 2005-04-05  12:29 PM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
>What if there are two bars?  See, for example,
>http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Zen/TopBar, in which there is a top bar
>and a separate area for action links.  If we go with the idea that
>action links belong in a wiki page, we need a name other than TopBar.

I don't find the Zen example to be particularly user friendly, but then it 
is, perhaps, just an example of how many ways there are to provide menus. 
In this case they are:
1) the left side bar
2) the topmost page-wide bar
3) the second level action tabs
4) the third level drop down in what looks like the page body (These don't 
work very well in Firefox)

I hate to think of adding group headers and footers, a bottom bar, a right 
bar and a bottom-most page-wide footer.

Since admins can add as many bars et alia as they wish, why not establish 
the minimal standard set for PmWiki as four "bars" (call them what you 
will) at the top, bottom, left and right. They would each be populated from 
a PmWiki page, or omitted if the page was absent (or if suitable 
conditional code was present).

Admins who chose to use skins with 3 top bars would still not be prevented 
from doing so, and the skin would determine where or if the four "standard" 
bars appeared. So for example, what was called "TopBar" might be displayed 
as the third bar down in the Zen example. It would be up to the skin author 
to come up with names for the additional bars. If I wanted them, I would be 
inclined to number them like heading levels TopBar, TopBar2, TopBar3, and 
so on.

If my experience is typical, an admin will initially spend a great deal of 
time fiddling with the bars to get them to look and work as desired, but 
then they will be ignored for long periods of time. Having a name that 
reminds me what it does and where it goes is essential for that day in the 
future when I want to add another button.


Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 




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