Mailing List Archive: Bricolage: devel

Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage

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phillip at communitybandwidth

Feb 26, 2009, 11:06 AM

Post #1 of 6 (1473 views)
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Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage

With all the banter on the lists about UIs and in-place editing and
mentions of Bricolite, I thought I should post a little information on
Bricolite for those who haven't had the opportunity to hear about it
(in detail) or see it in action yet.

(Jump to the screencast linked below, if you're impatient.)

The quick version of the story is that:

- The fine folks at New Internationalist (http://www.newint.org)
wanted an easy way for bloggers from around the world to post stories
directly to the new New Internationalist blog (http://
blog.newint.org). The NI blog is powered by Bricolage, as is their
main site.

- The key criteria was basically: it has to be _easy_ enough for non-
techies / new bloggers to use it with very little training.

Our first thought (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/bricolage/users/32918
) was that XML-RPC would be the way to go, as it would let bloggers
use tools like ScribeFire, Ecto, Mars Edit, etc. However, after a bit
more conversation with potential users, we realized that even those
tools might be too complicated for the average non-technical user and
decided to simplify even further.

The result was Bricolite. The first version was _very_ basic -- just a
proof of concept -- and that was done about six months ago. After
that, the UI was improved with some straightforward UI styling
(borrowed heavily from Tumblr, in fact), an AJAX keyword lookup was
added, and finally -- a couple of months ago -- an XML-RPC interface
was added to allow the use of the above-mentioned clients (though
there are still some minor bugs there).

So, without further adieu, here's a quick screen cast:
http://screencast.com/t/qdmwtvjlaz

Credit goes to Greg Heo for doing the heavy lifting, Adam Ma'anit for
the early thinking, and Charlie Harvey for several improvements to the
NI version.

We've been using it at NI for months now with relatively few problems.
I believe that the folks at Sportsnet are using it too. I hope others
will also take a look at it for these specific requirements. (As good
as Bricolage's UI gets, we feel that we'd still want something even
simpler for bloggers.)

I'm really hoping that we can get code.bricolage.cc up-and-running in
the next few weeks and make it possible for folks to share this kind
of work. I know Greg's got some re-factoring / abstracting to do on
the core Bricolite to make it useful for others, and Brian as Gossamer
Threads is working on getting code.bricolage.cc sorted out.

Here's to a fun year. If you have any questions about Bricolite, or
about having access to the code, please pop Greg or I (or both of us)
a note directly.

--
Phillip Smith // Simplifier of Technology // COMMUNITY BANDWIDTH
www.communitybandwidth.ca // www.phillipadsmith.com

david at kineticode

Feb 26, 2009, 11:16 AM

Post #2 of 6 (1409 views)
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Re: Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage [In reply to]

On Feb 26, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Phillip Smith wrote:

> So, without further adieu, here's a quick screen cast:
> http://screencast.com/t/qdmwtvjlaz

Nice! Is there any way to preview a story from Bricolite?

> I'm really hoping that we can get code.bricolage.cc up-and-running
> in the next few weeks and make it possible for folks to share this
> kind of work. I know Greg's got some re-factoring / abstracting to
> do on the core Bricolite to make it useful for others, and Brian as
> Gossamer Threads is working on getting code.bricolage.cc sorted out.

I'd be happy to get this added to our existing svn repository, if
you'd like. Releases can also go on the Bricolage Web site, if you want.

Best,

David

john.durkin at gmail

Feb 26, 2009, 11:37 AM

Post #3 of 6 (1408 views)
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Re: Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage [In reply to]

This is quite close to what i need for my users...

Also curious about preview...

And what about adding media?

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:16 AM, David E. Wheeler <david [at] kineticode>wrote:

> On Feb 26, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Phillip Smith wrote:
>
> So, without further adieu, here's a quick screen cast:
>> http://screencast.com/t/qdmwtvjlaz
>>
>
> Nice! Is there any way to preview a story from Bricolite?
>
> I'm really hoping that we can get code.bricolage.cc up-and-running in the
>> next few weeks and make it possible for folks to share this kind of work. I
>> know Greg's got some re-factoring / abstracting to do on the core Bricolite
>> to make it useful for others, and Brian as Gossamer Threads is working on
>> getting code.bricolage.cc sorted out.
>>
>
> I'd be happy to get this added to our existing svn repository, if you'd
> like. Releases can also go on the Bricolage Web site, if you want.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
>

phillip at communitybandwidth

Feb 26, 2009, 12:08 PM

Post #4 of 6 (1408 views)
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Re: Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage [In reply to]

Quick responses (in the middle of my Castellano / Spanish lesson!):

On 26-Feb-09, at 5:37 PM, John Durkin wrote:

> This is quite close to what i need for my users...

Super.

> Also curious about preview...

There are two options for previews. Currently, at NI, there's really
no pressing need for a preview, as the blog posts are quite
straightforward text (mostly) and the workflow typically looks like:

- In Bricolite, user creates new post and publishes it (which returns
the live URL to the UI)
- User clicks on live link and views post on live site
- If post is perfect, user goes to make a cup of tea and slacks off
for the rest of the day
- If post has a typo, user returns to the Bricolite screen (by closing
the preview) and makes the edit (as they're still on the post's edit
screen)

However, should you want to enable preview, there are two approaches:

1. There's a "preview" option in the WYMeditor, which simply shows a
representation of the content of the textarea against a white
background. Not back for proofing, etc. (Also not perfect, and I
recall that there are some problems with it.)

2. The more thorough way, which we haven't implemented, but should be
relatively straightforward is:

- On "Save and continue," Bricolite currently does a "bric_soap story
create" and gets the ID of the story back. It should be easy enough to
add a "bric_soap story publish --to-preview" for that same story and
then return the preview URL (in the same way that the URL for a
published story is).

> And what about adding media?

That's next on the list. Right now, the WYMeditor provides a simple
"put your media's URL in here" way of adding media to the textarea
directly. However, both Bricolage and the XML-RPC blog standard (e.g.,
MovableType's) can accommodate a media enclosure -- so I would gamble
a guess that it should be straightforward to add a "Upload a media
asset" link to the Bricolite UI and simply attach that as the primary
related media asset for the story.

> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:16 AM, David E. Wheeler <david [at] kineticode
> >wrote:
>> I'd be happy to get this added to our existing svn repository, if
>> you'd
>> like. Releases can also go on the Bricolage Web site, if you want.

Might be a good place for it, pending the code.bricolage.cc site.
Would also be good to be able to track issues against it, patches,
etc. Thoughts?

Phillip.

--
Phillip Smith // Simplifier of Technology // COMMUNITY BANDWIDTH
www.communitybandwidth.ca // www.phillipadsmith.com

phillip at communitybandwidth

Feb 26, 2009, 12:11 PM

Post #5 of 6 (1404 views)
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Re: Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage [In reply to]

On 26-Feb-09, at 6:08 PM, Phillip Smith wrote:

> 2. The more thorough way, which we haven't implemented, but should
> be relatively straightforward is:
>
> - On "Save and continue," Bricolite currently does a "bric_soap
> story create" and gets the ID of the story back. It should be easy
> enough to add a "bric_soap story publish --to-preview" for that same
> story and then return the preview URL (in the same way that the URL
> for a published story is).

Though, I should note: if your preview domain has an access
restriction, the blogger would be required to log in to that site.
Hence why the post first, preview live, and edit after approach works
well as far as simplicity goes. :-)

--
Phillip Smith // Simplifier of Technology // COMMUNITY BANDWIDTH
www.communitybandwidth.ca // www.phillipadsmith.com

david at kineticode

Feb 26, 2009, 12:37 PM

Post #6 of 6 (1407 views)
Permalink

Re: Say "hello, world" to Bricolite - the lightweight UI for Bricolage [In reply to]

On Feb 26, 2009, at 12:08 PM, Phillip Smith wrote:

>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:16 AM, David E. Wheeler <david [at] kineticode
>> >wrote:
>>> I'd be happy to get this added to our existing svn repository, if
>>> you'd
>>> like. Releases can also go on the Bricolage Web site, if you want.
>
> Might be a good place for it, pending the code.bricolage.cc site.
> Would also be good to be able to track issues against it, patches,
> etc. Thoughts?

Sure, if you get code.bricolage.cc up and running soon, we can move
everything there. Otherwise, we have svn and Bugzilla right now.

Best,

David

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