Rotem Dan wrote:
- Layout should be separated completely from the PHP code. I will
check out a template engine like smarty (http://smarty.php.net/) to see how to do that effectively.
Yes!
- Site look will be redesigned to fit the 21st century (new "kick-ass"
look, yes that's its name :) ). The main problem with all current designs is that they basically still think in terms of "UseModWiki". ie. sooooo 95' single content HTML with no color, dynamics, and no usability features and even GodDamnHorribleCamelCase.
Yes... in part. But the default skin must be backwards-compatible -- this is the *curse* of all web design, sadly. Believe me, if I could simply design to CSS standards... *dreams*
I think more in terms of making a Content Management System, dynamic content type layout, which means:
- Boxes, structure and order. Everything on the page is structured
dynamically. (every editable box can have a cute "edit" and "print" button on the top right corner, for example)
hmmmmmmm.... sounds like complications Wikipedia = simple to edit. simple to learn.
- A page can present more than just the article. Additional content
may be: TOC on the side box. Previous versions. Recent changes, announcements, news, etc. (whatever we'll choose, or the user will customize)
confusing... on advanced skins, maybe. But one thing I want to improve on the current Standard skin: *too much clutter*. Let's not replace clutter with more clutter!
- No more dedicated stand-alone "special pages". These are important
features that deserve to be integrated (somehow) into the engine itself. ie. forget those yellow backgrounds etc. etc.
Why? I don't get this.
- Discussions can be integrated into the layout. ie. they may sit
after the article itself like blogs do, and may or may not be a wiki. (just an idea)
Not a good idea. We have an audience of readers. They don't need to see backstage unless they ask to. Their modems and our bandwidth doesn't need to pump out talk pages that aren't needed.
- Interface can change to whatever language the user specifies in
their preferences. A side effect of the single installation, a user will able to work, say on an article in Swedish with the English interface.. (don't flame me for this, I don't know if technically it would be viable, just giving a direction...)
hmmm.... yeah, sure why not. But bear this in mind: when I make interlanguage links, the only clue I have of which language I am on is the interface! (this is why my design proposals specify the language in the header!)
- W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional/CSS. A really basic one for a modern site
(I even use the strict XHTML 1.1 on my site). And yes, I will make sure it uses features that are compatible with browsers from IE 4.0+ and Netscape 6. See http://www.w3.org/ and http://www.w3schools.com/
Well... I'd be happy if we made correct <p> blocks. That seems to be a hard enough goal to achieve! Let's set our sights on that to start with! (I've said it before: Mychaeel's Wookee parser handles this correctly by chomping text into objects. I don't claim to understand it, but maybe our coders should copy his code design?)
In summary: don't be too ambitious. Let's implement something like Smarty first. Then designers can easily work on new skins. -- tarquin