Design notes for weblog

Questions

Q: How does things like hierarchical nav work with generated content? e.g. the manual pages on the swipl site A: The meta info is on a separate predicate, there's no reason that pred can't be complex. Certainly the handler meta pred itself should handle 'prefix'.

Q: Should the hierarchy be split between pages and chunks? A:probably not. Too many places where this distinction's going to make things awkward. eg. directory menu. Needs to be a unified way of naming everything in the site.

Q: Is it important to know how many items there are without generating them all? A: Yup. It is.

My Code Chunks

Disclosure

Anything that discloses should be able to be marked for premium content

Hierarchy

It's beginning to look like a unified way of enumerating a site hierarchy is an important thing to have. This is an information hierarchy, rather than a page hierarchy. E.g. a set of search results, shown 10 per page, would be a flat list of items, rather than a list of pages each with 10 items.

Page Chunk

Ajax response with a chunk of a page, used for example for Accordion.

So, for example, accordion pattern could be

\accordion([\a_section, \b_section, \c_section])

where the section content is actually generated within some ajax response.

Discovery mode

It would be very cool to have a mode that added text attributes to most items so you could find out where information came from

Handler Meta

Unified system for attaching meta information to handlers.

Handler Meta Information

• Label - this is the default 'name' for the page (eg in the title)
• tree navigation hierarchical navigation
• K=V tags for Welie:faceted navigation, search, etc.
• sequences (for wizards, stepping)
• is this handler discoverable?
• security - accessible by <role list>
• home page flag ("I am the home page")
• mini-page (e.g. for minesweeping)

Uses of Handler meta info

• debug page with all handlers
• site map
• access control
• navigation

In-page hierarchy

introspectable page definition, separates content organization from presentation within the context of a single page.

Could be meta info on tags? Is the # anchor system useful here?

Used by:

• Welie:Accordion (non ajax version)

Special Content

Interactive Map

Graphs

Pattern selector

Having selection advice on on the site would be very useful. Might even have a 'usage warn' mode like the debug mode that would add 'such and such pattern might be better here' advice

My Pattern List

Navigation

Are the navigation patterns best served by being site nav vs. in page section nav? e.g. Directory Navigation might be on a very long page

What about the multi-frame nav pattern common to, say, javadoc style browsers?

Welie:Accordion

User opens one panel at a time

Uses: Hierarchical in-page organization

Welie:Headerless Menu

Combine menus in a vertical menu using different visual clues instead of headers

Uses: Hierarchical site organization Labels

Welie: Breadcrumb

Uses: Hierarchical site organization Labels

Debug

debug page with all handlers

debug page with broken links

site spider

syntax error flag

errors discovered during generation of page should produce a callout box describing error on the generation page, not a failure.