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From Textpattern CMS User Documentation

This project deals with the refreshing and restyling the administration section in Textpattern, using semantic and clean code. The objective of this is to make the Textpattern user's experience generally better where he/she will inherently spend most of his/her time working on his/her site.

Think: incremental improvements, not radical overhaul And: "Give us the tools to help ourselves"

Contents 1 Forum Threads 1.1 Active 1.2 Expired 2 Timeline/Methodology 2.1 Current project 2.2 Further development: 3 Working Documents 3.1 Current project 3.2 Further development 4 Working Group 4.1 Coding 4.2 Debugging 5 Browser support / debugging 6 Screenshots 7 Reference 7.1 Semantic XHTML / CSS naming conventions 7.2 CMS best practice 7.3 Similar projects 7.4 General software development

Forum Threads

Active

• Ace's Soapbox: Oct 2006 - present
• Txp Admin Facelift, take 3: June 2006 - present

Expired

• Cosmetic Surgery: June - Nov 2006
• Txp Admin Facelift, take 2: Jan - Nov 2006
• Txp Admin Facelift: Aug 2005 - April 2006

Timeline/Methodology

(suggested approach)

Current project

Rework the admin into valid, semantic markup with hooks for CSS and DOM scripting

Next steps:

• Establish a group of interested parties (done, but your still very welcome to sign-up! - see 'Working Group' below)
• Get input on project from the developers
• Discuss and agree naming conventions, document here on the wiki
• Assign screens/elements to working group
• Working group to post markup examples on forum for agreement, document agreed examples here on the wiki
• Combine markup examples into linked static HTML prototype
• Develop the CSS
• Debug like crazy
• Pass final markup+CSS to dev team for working into Crockery

Further development:

• Document feature ideas/requests
• Discuss & prioritse
• Choose one and implement
• Rinse and repeat :)

Working Documents

Current project

• Semantic Markup Proposal (outline of new markup, as proposed and agreed on the forum)

Further development

• talk:Admin-side Redevelopment (the place to keep track of all our ideas)
• Textpattern identity & guiding principles
• Textpattern users/workflow (this should eventually be cross-ref with Feature ideas..., see above)

Working Group

Add your name here if you can help out with any of the following:

Coding

Your forum name, email:

• hazel - office [at] graphics-plus.co.uk
• Ace of Dubs - steven [at] housecafemusic.com
• Jakob - jakob_r [at] gmx.net
• rloaderro - support [at] travelatlas.org

Debugging

Your forum name, which platform/browsers:

• hazel - OSX (Firefox, Safari)
• Ace of Dubs - OSX (Firefox, Safari, Omniweb, Opera) Virtual PC (IE 6)
• Jakob - OS-X & WinXP

Browser support / debugging

The browser's we are aiming to support (credit to jm):

• IE5.5+ (probably the greatest no. of users for client sites)
• Firefox 1.5+
• Safari 1.0
• Opera 8.5+

One advantage of developing the static HTML version first (see Methodology, above) is we could check things with browsershots.org, even accross 'rare' stuff e.g. Konqueror etc.

Screenshots

This will fit in to a larger section at some point, but it's here at the moment :) (Flick has a policy ('NIPSA') of not showing 'non-photographic' images in public areas (e.g. like these groups). You need to be signed in with a Flickr account and join the group to see the images, sorry)

• www.flickr.com/groups/textpattern-admin-redesign: Collected proposals
• www.flickr.com/groups/textpattern-admin-reference: Examples of other notable CMS admin interfaces
• [1]: Admin with side nav and enhancements

Reference

These lists collect some useful reading:

Semantic XHTML / CSS naming conventions

• mozilla.org Markup Reference
• Content with Style: A CSS Framework
• Stuff & Nonsense: What's in a name (pt2)
• Content with Style: Modular CSS
• The Elements of CSS Style

CMS best practice

• Vitamin: Redefining Content Management
• Jeff Veen: Making A Better Open Source CMS
• the microformats principles
• Jeff Croft on personal content management

Similar projects

• 'Shuttle' redesign of WordPress admin

General software development

• Getting Real: 37signals landmark book (now free!)