FRAPI UI/UX Review & The Future of FRAPI

[Davey Shafik]

Hey guys,

So I started working on a review of the entire FRAPI UI/UX (prompted by https://github.com/frapi/frapi/issues/115 and https://github.com/frapi/frapi/issues/117).

Basically, I'd like to start pushing towards a new release of FRAPI; and also to start thinking about 1.0.

I've looked at the roadmap (at https://github.com/frapi/frapi/wiki/Roadmap) and I'd like to revisit and refine.

For the immediate future, I'd like to update http://getfrapi.com/ to reflect the current state of the project (e.g. remove all echolibre stuffs and update the intro video :) — this should probably become a github repo? In fact, it should probably be at frapi.github.com (CNAME to it) and have the docs properly integrated into it.

Second, there are only a couple of actual bugs, we should review, bogus, and identify a few issues for an immediate release (0.2?)

Third, I'd like to implement analytics using google analytics and/or apigee as the backend — there is a mobile API for google that allows us to just feed info into it, and pull it back out into the admin using the API.

OK, so back to the UI/UX stuff, you can find my current progress here: https://github.com/frapi/frapi/wiki/UI-UX-Review

I still have a ways to go; I'm working on a mockup in Bootstrap that doesn't lose the entire feel of the current admin (the muted colors, for example) but is going to be more expandable as features are added and addresses the issues highlighted.

You can preview what I have of the mockup so far, here: http://screencast.com/t/AfJBfoUzs

Notes: I "designed" a new logo; I dislike the left-hand nav so far (And I haven't started to color it properly either). Some actions, like "Create New Action" should probably be a button in-page, rather than a left-hand nab for one item.

I think we should try to setup an IRC meeting of folks who care, for a discussion on the roadmap, what features we want, what legacy we cannot break (David mentioned there were projects using the current version for whom BC breakages are a problem) and get things moving.

If it's not clear, I'm offering to spearhead the effort to get to 1.0.

One final note, it seems that frapi-dev and frapi-general have pretty much gotten muddled up to be the same thing; we can either clean up frapi-dev (e.g. point folks to frapi-general); maybe this is just because we haven't been having many discussions about development of FRAPI? or maybe start a frapi-internals list? :)

- Davey

[marty]

Hi sounds great!

What I would personally like is a more pluggable design, something
like Drupal hooks (well, that's the only thing I know), but the main
point being a system that is easy to extend with additional plugins..

I think that the design is really quite nice as it is and (again, my
personal opinion) wouldn't care to invest too much time in actually
redesigning anything in the admin interface - making it more pluggable
as well is of course a different thing.

I'd be interested to at least listen in on the IRC discussion if you
get that scheduled someday.

PS. What about David, I'm guessing he doesn't have time for this
anymore?

Anyway, great to have someone pushing this forward :)

Cheers,
Martin

On Apr 3, 5:29 am, Davey Shafik <dsha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>

> So I started working on a review of the entire FRAPI UI/UX (prompted byhttps://github.com/frapi/frapi/issues/115andhttps://github.com/frapi/frapi/issues/117).

>
> Basically, I'd like to start pushing towards a new release of FRAPI; and
> also to start thinking about 1.0.
>

> I've looked at the roadmap (athttps://github.com/frapi/frapi/wiki/Roadmap)

[David Coallier]

On 3 April 2012 02:28, marty <mar...@webscio.net> wrote:

> PS. What about David, I'm guessing he doesn't have time for this
> anymore?

Hey there Marty,

I'm still very involved, just working closely with Davey at work :) Worry not!

--
David Coallier

[Clay Hinson]

Davey, 

I think these are great ideas to move FRAPI forward. Thanks for stepping up on this. I'm definitely in for bringing the development process back up to speed. 

I'd really like to get FRAPI into a release cycle with tagged/versioned releases. I think one thing holding things back is the lack of versioning, if you're working from master your install can be broken at any time by pulling. Clearing the outstanding issues and any existing known bugs is an excellent place to start. 

I was honestly never quite sure on the purpose of the wiki, it seemed to have been superseded by the documentation at frapi.github.com, but if it's used more for development tracking, i.e. Roadmap, I think it makes more sense. 

Regarding the IRC meeting - any ideas on the best way to schedule an IRC meeting like this? perhaps a shared google calendar for the project? 

Regarding the 2 mailing lists, I think frapi-dev as a discussion channel sort of never took off because so much development was done internally at echolibre and/or via IRC. Given the distributed nature of the group, I feel the project would benefit from discussing the bigger picture here. Issues and pull requests only go so far, IMO. Whether that's on this frapi-dev or a new frapi-internals I'm not particular either way, but frapi-internals might be clearer towards its purpose.

-- 
Clay Hinson