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