Hi Lex,
This is very interesting - and it's great to have a video, so that we can see all the features in one place, along with your very helpful explanations.
- If I understand it correctly, there are seven "consoles" to what is basically a dashboard interface: 1) an "About this application" display, 2) a "Current MediaWiki info" display, 3) a log display, 4) the "Extension store", 5) the "App store", 6) A "Version manager", which if I understand it correctly is just instructions about how to upgrade MediaWiki using Docker, but maybe there's more to it than that, and 7) a "Snapshot manager", which uses Restic to do backups. I could be wrong about one or more of these, though.
- This is kind of a minor note, but it's strange to give such prominent placement to the "About this application" stuff - that's usually in another tab, or just a link. I know it's a little too early to talk about user interface stuff, but I just wanted to note that.
- I've said before that I don't think this application should include an "Extension store" - i.e., that the thing that lets people install and uninstall extensions (and, presumably, skins as well) should be a separate application. I thought you agreed with me on that, but maybe you've changed your mind, so I guess we should discuss it.
- Regardless of where it's located, let me also note that the JSON file defining curated information about the set of recommended extensions - which is a clever idea - should, I think, be made a setting within this application, rather than hardcoded to the MWStake URL or whatever it is. That would let different groups, or people, define their own set of recommendations.
- I thought before that, when you used the term "app", you meant a combination of MediaWiki extensions and wiki pages - but now I think you mean just a set of wiki pages. Either way, I don't think it makes sense to have an "app store" in this application, because I don't think it makes sense to have one outside the wiki - I think all installing/uninstalling of wiki page groups should be done from within the wiki, using Page Exchange or some other, comparable extension.
- For the "Version manager", is there any way to have this section provide buttons to let the user actually directly do the steps necessary for a Docker download, i.e. make this a true "Version manager"?
- There of course remains the question of how this application should be made accessible only to authorized users - we talked about this before, but I just wanted to note that this is still an issue.
Thanks again for the video - and there's some very exciting functionality being demonstrated here.
-Yaron