Kicking the tires on the UX toolkit

[Colin Clark]

Clay,

Your next drink is definitely still on me. :)

Your question about how to develop a Fluid component is a timely one. 
There's certainly more framework architecture work that really needs to 
be done. Much of this thinking is embedded in the Reorderer, but needs 
to be extended out for the use by new Fluid components.

I hope my presentation this morning outlined some of the heuristics for 
how to develop a component. New architecture work is a very high 
priority for the coming months, and you can expect a lot of new code and 
documentation soon. In the meantime, I'm personally willing to help 
anyone out who is considering embarking on developing a new Fluid component.

Colin

Clay Fenlason wrote:
> On second reading, and following a comment from Mara, I realize that I
> may have confused the message by mixing my "we"s.  I mean to speak as
> a Fluid outsider here - though I hope the practice of Fluid members
> buying me drinks will nevertheless continue - and when I say "we", I
> mean the design-poor assignments2 team of IU and Georgia Tech: those
> of us hoping still to leverage and contribute back to the design-rich
> Fluid project.
> 
> ~Clay
> 
> 2007/12/4, Clay Fenlason <clay.fenlason at et.gatech.edu>:
>> An inter-institutional team is coming together to rewrite the
>> Assignments tool in Sakai, a team without any allocated design
>> resource, and so I've been actively reviewing the UX toolkit from the
>> perspective of those needs.
>>
>> There are design patterns and components we might wish were already in
>> a Fluid release, of course, but that's not the point I'm trying to
>> make.  It seems very likely that our Assignments work presents an
>> opportunity to create reusable chunks of UI, and it would really be
>> best for everyone if we tried to create them as Fluid components (as
>> opposed to merely trying to develop the UI portions in such a
>> commonsensical way that someone might review and adapt them).
>>
>> So what we're missing is documentation on how to develop a Fluid
>> component.  I think we'd like to contribute, fulfilling the ideal of
>> meeting local needs in a communally beneficent way, but we need to
>> better understand the standards, packaging, or what have you, which
>> would allow Fluid to accept and incorporate our contribution.
>>
>> ~Clay
>>
> 
> 

-- 
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
http://fluidproject.org