Need community feed back for iUI extension development.

[Vic Hudson]

First, I know this is long. Thanks in advance for taking the time to
read it. It is appreciated.

After playing around with the TbBMod extension I made a few months
ago, I have realized it has the potential to do become a lot more than
just a toolbar button modder.

Anyone who's never heard of this or is not familiar with it please go
here for demo.
http://iui-js.appspot.com/iui/ext-sandbox/TbBMod/index.html#_home

You can download the script from the development clones or in a zip
file here attached to comment three.
http://code.google.com/p/iui/issues/detail?id=47

The way the extension is written now in addition to modding the
toolbar button you can apply the 3 options it has to any item in your
web app with a unique id. I can see a lot of use potential there.
Several people frequently post to the effect of "How can I make this
or that exception to the way iUI does this or that?" My goal with the
new version will be an extension that offers people a way to make
exceptions to several iUI behaviors, and mod elements in their web app
on a page view basis. Basically an extension that can handle lots of
behavior exceptions and page element mods with out a user changing a
single line of iUI code or css. So that way as iUI is updated they
wont have to worry about integrating the updates into their hacked up
version and all their mods should keep on working. I will be working
on the new version after I get out of school for the summer next week,
and some input from the community would be really appreciated.

So here's what I'm asking.

Does anyone use it? (Need to know for reverse compatibility needs if I
make some drastic changes)

Has anyone had problems with it?(Bug fixes)

I have decided I don't care much for the name and it doesn't really
fit anymore with the direction I'll be taking it. I am considering
iUIPageModder, PageModder or something simple to that effect. Feedback
on this?????

Here's a rough over view of what I would like to bring to the
extension.

iUI behavior mods
Have your page slide in backwards on demand -- useful for AJAX form
results when adding things to lists etc... and things like a the
familiar settings page where you just click back (the back button will
actually submit the form and the previous or updated page will slide
back into view from left)

Turn toolbar button into a form submitter.

Back button overrides - sometimes you want the back button on a
particular page to always link back to another particular page

With the integration of iScroll there will be the option for a new
toolbar at the bottom that may need customized on the fly

Change the following element attributes on the fly
-class - change class or add remove class (could be a quick way to
drastically alter some things appearance)
-visibilty - for buttons, links, misc. elements and possibly show/hide
bigger chunks of page, say the whole lower tool bar.
-button or link text
-button or link url
-lower toolbar button image or text and url

If anyone has any kind of feedback or has something they think I
should add please post here and let me know. I would like this to be a
well implemented flexibility extension for iUI.

Thanks for everyone's time to read this. I know it's a long one.

@Sean
I haven't had much time to look at the work on the iPad stuff you're
doing yet. Will any of this still be relevant or needed there? Will it
mesh with what your planning in iUI development? Will it break
anything you know of yet?

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[iMessenger App Team]

It's a cool extension but as a developer myself (iMessenger), I think
your iPad web framework is much more valuable and in time, could use
this extension. Thanks for the dedication to the community!


Sent from my iPhone

[Victor Hudson]

On Apr 30, 2010, at 16:33, iMessenger App Team <imesse...@me.com>
wrote:

> It's a cool extension but as a developer myself (iMessenger), I
> think your iPad web framework is much more valuable and in time,
> could use this extension. Thanks for the dedication to the community!

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't got to work with the iPad part of
the frame work yet, but my goal would be to make this compatible there
and useful where applicable.

Vic

[lictor4]

Sounds awesome Vic
Extra flexibility is always welcome. That actually gives me a name
idea, iUIflex.

I'm not hung up on backwards compatibility, my take on it is this (and
for iUI in general): New features are worth the small effort needed to
update my code to comply with new releases.

I really like your idea with the backSlide form submit.
Are you thinking of adding style features as well or sticking with js
functionality?

[Victor Hudson]

On May 3, 2010, at 22:47, lictor4 <lic...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sounds awesome Vic
> Extra flexibility is always welcome. That actually gives me a name
> idea, iUIflex.

Thanks for the feedback. I think iUIflex is a good candidate and I
kind of like it.

> Are you thinking of adding style features as well or sticking with js
> functionality?

The most I had really planned as far as styles was an elements
visibility and the ability to change,add or remove a class. My thought
is people could define extra style needs in an extra css by class name
and then use my extension to change classes on demand. Do you think or
can you provide some use cases where more direct style manipulation
would be useful or better served in this extension?

[Sean Gilligan]

Vic Hudson wrote:
> iUI behavior mods
> Have your page slide in backwards on demand -- useful for AJAX form
> results when adding things to lists etc... and things like a the
> familiar settings page where you just click back (the back button will
> actually submit the form and the previous or updated page will slide
> back into view from left)
>

This overlaps with some work that I've done (on forks), and I'd
definitely like to see some of this functionality get into the core.
But don't let me stop you from doing anything. Extensions are intended
to a be a method of trying out new ideas that may later be integrated
into the core.

> Turn toolbar button into a form submitter.
>

I'd like to provide more flexibility in form submission. You may need
mods to the core here.

> Back button overrides - sometimes you want the back button on a
> particular page to always link back to another particular page
>

I want this in the core.

> Thanks for everyone's time to read this. I know it's a long one.
>

Yeah, the length scared me off for a few days... Sorry.

> @Sean
> I haven't had much time to look at the work on the iPad stuff you're
> doing yet. Will any of this still be relevant or needed there?

I think so. I'm not sure yet what the iPad stuff will do to
extensions, but some will require re-work. That's one of the reasons, I
want the iPad stuff to be part of 0.40, so we can sort out those issue
before release. I think the iPad stuff is a big deal and there has been
much interest. I'll post more on iPad support soon.

> Will it
> mesh with what your planning in iUI development?

As I said, their might be some overlap, but we can resolve that as we
move along. You should also take a look at the very bare bones
"iui-views" plugin:
http://code.google.com/p/iui/source/browse/#hg/web-app/iui/ext-sandbox/view

As well as C.W. Zachary's suite of patches (#127-#133):
http://code.google.com/p/iui/issues/list?can=2&q=cwzachary

I also wanted to talk to you about better (more HTML-like) ways of
putting some of the "metadata" into iUI HTML.

> Will it break
> anything you know of yet?
>
>

It's hard to say. We'll figure it out.

-- Sean

[Victor Hudson]

On May 4, 2010, at 4:00, Sean Gilligan <msgil...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Vic Hudson wrote:
>> iUI behavior mods
>> Have your page slide in backwards on demand -- useful for AJAX form
>> results when adding things to lists etc... and things like a the
>> familiar settings page where you just click back (the back button
>> will
>> actually submit the form and the previous or updated page will slide
>> back into view from left)
>>
> This overlaps with some work that I've done (on forks), and I'd
> definitely like to see some of this functionality get into the core.

It would be fine with me if you want to work together on putting this
into core or I could just develope into extension and you could use
what you want. Are the forks you worked on in the clones?

>> Turn toolbar button into a form submitter.
>>
>
> I'd like to provide more flexibility in form submission. You may
> need mods to the core here.

I've already thought of that. I was going to check if iui form
functions were public via iui.functions. If not my thought was to
propose 2 new public iui functions that could eliminate the need for
most extensions to call internal iui functions at all.

Iui.formInject(formToSubmit)// function grabs form and submits with
iui methods
Iui.linkInject(url, backwards)// function decides how link is done
Ajax vs internal

We can discuss these in more detail if you want.

>> Back button overrides - sometimes you want the back button on a
>> particular page to always link back to another particular page
>>
>
> I want this in the core.

Funny this was what first motivated me to do this extension but I ran
out of spring break time to implement. Would love to help get in core.

> I also wanted to talk to you about better (more HTML-like) ways of
> putting some of the "metadata" into iUI HTML.

Aside from the bad acronym name I gave it the form implementation is
my biggest grievance with extension. I chose it because it was valid
HTML, already a hidden construct to store name value pairs. I am open
to any suggestions on replacing it. Was why I was concerned about use
and reverse compatibility. Right now I'm thinking HTML var tag maybe?
Help?

> Yeah, the length scared me off for a few days... Sorry.

No sweat. I won't be able to start till later this week. I posted
hoping to get good amount of feed back to work with over the week.

Definitly interested in the iPhone/iPad all in one model your working
on. I'll check out links you provided too.

Vic