[pmwiki-users] Re: Supporting different modes in default pmwiki

Bronwyn Boltwood arndis at gmail.com
Sun Aug 7 15:15:35 CDT 2005


On 8/7/05, chr at home.se <chr at home.se> wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Thomas -Balu- Walter wrote:

> Maybe I should phrase myself differently. Think of this as allocating the
> screen real estate differently in the different modes. In reader mode,
> *most* of the area is for reading pages and finding what you are looking
> for. We'd have a single big alluring button/link called EDIT. In author
> mode, we'd have several links for editing various pages and perhaps links
> to markup documentation etc. Or maybe links to methods for spell checking
> the current page.

Correct me if I'm wrong: The mode expresses the user's current
emphasis.  The interface should change accordingly, so that it is
*easier* to find and use controls relevant to the current emphasis,
while irrelevant controls are de-emphasized or even hidden.  Examples:

- Visitor: mostly reading, with occasional editing.  Needs navigation,
search, and big attractive "Edit Page" control.
- Author: spends as much time editing as reading.  Still need search
and navigation, but perhaps a little less prominently.  One or more
easy to find "Edit Page" controls and links to appropriate
documentation, but *also* page history and uploading.
- Admin: Primary activities are editing and administrative tasks such
as updating navigation or user interface pages, copying or moving
pages.  Needs plenty of navigation pages that collect links most
useful for certain tasks or topics, e.g. wiki customization, skin
development, recipe development, and lots of access to documentation
and site maintenance pages like Site.Sidebar.

Done well, this would be a wonderful thing, but doing it well will not
be easy.  But that's no reason to give up on it!
 
> > How are you going to identify them anyway?
> 
> I was thinking that the modes would be easily visible on the screen,
> perhaps as different tabs for the different modes (I saw this on some
> skin, it looked nice).

Having a bar across the top, or a block in a sidebar that showed the
modes available and marked which one you were using would be perfect. 
I know an excellent way of doing it.

> > Being an admin I know my special (Site/)-pages and I know how to handle
> > attributes and stuff.
> 
> Ah.. that gives me an idea of something that'd be useful in admin mode.
> Let the sidebar indicate the attributes of the current page, i.e. what
> kind of passwords it requires etc.

Ooh....how about a second sidebar displaying the following:

!Recent Changes
%right%[[{$Name}?action=diff | Page History]]
- Last modified on {$LastModified} by {$LastModifiedBy} with IP
{$LastModifiedHost}
- change summary and/or diff (if no change summary)
!Metadata
%right%[[{$Name}?action=edit | Edit]]
- title
- keywords
- categories
- whatever other metadata the admin wants
!Page attributes 
%right%[[{$Name}?action=attr | Edit]]
- page attributes such as password types and sources (heading has an
?action=attr link)
!Attached files
%right%[[{$Name}?action=upload | Upload]]
%right%[[{$Name}?action=edit | Change links]]
- list of files attached to this page, with options to re-upload

How's that for a contextual admin console?  Make a wikipage so it can
be rearranged or have recipe-related actions added.

Bronwyn




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