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Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI?

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gunnarstrand at yahoo

Jul 6, 2009, 12:55 PM

Post #1 of 5 (890 views)
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Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI?

Hi,

I am a little new in the web design area. I'm trying to design an
application where the "view" part must be simple to replace by whomever
installs it, with elements of their own design. This would work
comparable to "themes" or "skins". I've done some googling, but I
haven't got any obvious hits on this. The closest I _think_ is
"CatalystX::Usul", but I haven't really understood if that's what I'm
looking for :-)

Also, I would also want the person installing the application to be able
to restructure the visual parts using "components", where a component
could for instance be a "result ticker", "main menu", "member table" or
such. Perhaps in the way that Joomla does, but the components will be
application specific. It's much a matter of deciding what components are
present in which views and where.

I imagine, for instance, a collection of widgets (button,
drop-down-list, text field etc) which are reused in the TT templates. A
component would then use these widgets as building blocks, populating
them using data from the stash. A "view" (webpage) would be a template
including one or more of these components. A theme could then override
any widgets of choice to change the look-and-feel of the whole
application instantly.

Am I approaching this from the right direction and does anyone know if
there exists a framework similar to this to use with Catalyst?

Or should I perhaps go barking up the TT tree? ;-)

KR,
Gunnar

_______________________________________________
List: Catalyst [at] lists
Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
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jjn1056 at yahoo

Jul 6, 2009, 2:18 PM

Post #2 of 5 (831 views)
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Re: Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI? [In reply to]

----- Original Message ----
From: Gunnar Strand <gunnarstrand [at] yahoo>
To: catalyst [at] lists
Sent: Monday, July 6, 2009 3:55:27 PM
Subject: [Catalyst] Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI?

Hi,

I am a little new in the web design area. I'm trying to design an
application where the "view" part must be simple to replace by whomever
installs it, with elements of their own design. This would work
comparable to "themes" or "skins". I've done some googling, but I
haven't got any obvious hits on this. The closest I _think_ is
"CatalystX::Usul", but I haven't really understood if that's what I'm
looking for :-)

Also, I would also want the person installing the application to be able
to restructure the visual parts using "components", where a component
could for instance be a "result ticker", "main menu", "member table" or
such. Perhaps in the way that Joomla does, but the components will be
application specific. It's much a matter of deciding what components are
present in which views and where.

I imagine, for instance, a collection of widgets (button,
drop-down-list, text field etc) which are reused in the TT templates. A
component would then use these widgets as building blocks, populating
them using data from the stash. A "view" (webpage) would be a template
including one or more of these components. A theme could then override
any widgets of choice to change the look-and-feel of the whole
application instantly.

Am I approaching this from the right direction and does anyone know if
there exists a framework similar to this to use with Catalyst?

Or should I perhaps go barking up the TT tree? ;-)

KR,
Gunnar

---

The closet think to something componentized on the UI side would be Reaction,

http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/Reaction-0.002000/

but that has very high development and I think you'd have to be willing to get your hands
dirty with the code. Although someone actually using it may correct me :)

John

_______________________________________________
List: Catalyst [at] lists
Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst [at] lists/
Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/

zzbbyy at gmail

Jul 7, 2009, 12:50 AM

Post #3 of 5 (820 views)
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Re: Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI? [In reply to]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Gunnar Strand<gunnarstrand [at] yahoo> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am a little new in the web design area. I'm trying to design an
> application where the "view" part must be simple to replace by whomever
> installs it, with elements of their own design. This would work
> comparable to "themes" or "skins". I've done some googling, but I
> haven't got any obvious hits on this. The closest I _think_ is
> "CatalystX::Usul", but I haven't really understood if that's what I'm
> looking for :-)
>
> Also, I would also want the person installing the application to be able
> to restructure the visual parts using "components", where a component
> could for instance be a "result ticker", "main menu", "member table" or
> such. Perhaps in the way that Joomla does, but the components will be
> application specific. It's much a matter of deciding what components are
> present in which views and where.
>
> I imagine, for instance, a collection of widgets (button,
> drop-down-list, text field etc) which are reused in the TT templates. A
> component would then use these widgets as building blocks, populating
> them using data from the stash. A "view" (webpage) would be a template
> including one or more of these components. A theme could then override
> any widgets of choice to change the look-and-feel of the whole
> application instantly.
>
> Am I approaching this from the right direction and does anyone know if
> there exists a framework similar to this to use with Catalyst?
>
> Or should I perhaps go barking up the TT tree? ;-)

I am working on CatalystX::Elements with the first one being Comments
- I am not sure if it goes in the same direction - but it seems close.
The main goal is providing Catalyst feature addons - that could be
used as kind of scaffolding - that is they should be easy to assemble,
implying they are rather simplistic, and later easy to be gradually
replaced. For now I am not dealing with templates at all - the
Comments element lets you to stash a form which knows how to render
itself into HTML and can be inserted somewhere in the templates.
I've posted about it at my blog:
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2009/06/catalystxcomments-rfc.html
(also have a look at the comment). There is some code for it at:
http://github.com/gshank/ravlog/tree/8b7ec1493324212cde91927c15fc54cd2c9db25d/lib/CatalystX
(but now I've decided to change the name and add Elements - a play on
the chemical metaphor of Catalyst).

--
Zbigniew Lukasiak
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/

_______________________________________________
List: Catalyst [at] lists
Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst [at] lists/
Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/

gunnarstrand at yahoo

Jul 8, 2009, 8:31 PM

Post #4 of 5 (813 views)
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Re: Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI? [In reply to]

John Napiorkowski skrev:
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Gunnar Strand <gunnarstrand [at] yahoo>
> [...]
> I imagine, for instance, a collection of widgets (button,
> drop-down-list, text field etc) which are reused in the TT templates. A
> component would then use these widgets as building blocks, populating
> them using data from the stash. A "view" (webpage) would be a template
> including one or more of these components. A theme could then override
> any widgets of choice to change the look-and-feel of the whole
> application instantly.
>
> Am I approaching this from the right direction and does anyone know if
> there exists a framework similar to this to use with Catalyst?
>
> Or should I perhaps go barking up the TT tree? ;-)
>
> KR,
> Gunnar
>
>
> ---
>
> The closet think to something componentized on the UI side would be Reaction,
>
> http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/Reaction-0.002000/
>
> but that has very high development and I think you'd have to be willing to get your hands
> dirty with the code. Although someone actually using it may correct me :)
>
> John
>
Thanks. I'll go look it up.

KR,
Gunnar

_______________________________________________
List: Catalyst [at] lists
Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst [at] lists/
Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/

gunnarstrand at yahoo

Jul 8, 2009, 8:34 PM

Post #5 of 5 (809 views)
Permalink

Re: Themes, skins, templates and componentized UI? [In reply to]

Zbigniew Lukasiak skrev:
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Gunnar Strand<gunnarstrand [at] yahoo> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am a little new in the web design area. I'm trying to design an
>> application where the "view" part must be simple to replace by whomever
>> installs it, with elements of their own design. This would work
>> comparable to "themes" or "skins". I've done some googling, but I
>> haven't got any obvious hits on this. The closest I _think_ is
>> "CatalystX::Usul", but I haven't really understood if that's what I'm
>> looking for :-)
>>
>> Also, I would also want the person installing the application to be able
>> to restructure the visual parts using "components", where a component
>> could for instance be a "result ticker", "main menu", "member table" or
>> such. Perhaps in the way that Joomla does, but the components will be
>> application specific. It's much a matter of deciding what components are
>> present in which views and where.
>>
>> I imagine, for instance, a collection of widgets (button,
>> drop-down-list, text field etc) which are reused in the TT templates. A
>> component would then use these widgets as building blocks, populating
>> them using data from the stash. A "view" (webpage) would be a template
>> including one or more of these components. A theme could then override
>> any widgets of choice to change the look-and-feel of the whole
>> application instantly.
>>
>> Am I approaching this from the right direction and does anyone know if
>> there exists a framework similar to this to use with Catalyst?
>>
>> Or should I perhaps go barking up the TT tree? ;-)
>>
>
> I am working on CatalystX::Elements with the first one being Comments
> - I am not sure if it goes in the same direction - but it seems close.
> The main goal is providing Catalyst feature addons - that could be
> used as kind of scaffolding - that is they should be easy to assemble,
> implying they are rather simplistic, and later easy to be gradually
> replaced. For now I am not dealing with templates at all - the
> Comments element lets you to stash a form which knows how to render
> itself into HTML and can be inserted somewhere in the templates.
> I've posted about it at my blog:
> http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2009/06/catalystxcomments-rfc.html
> (also have a look at the comment). There is some code for it at:
> http://github.com/gshank/ravlog/tree/8b7ec1493324212cde91927c15fc54cd2c9db25d/lib/CatalystX
> (but now I've decided to change the name and add Elements - a play on
> the chemical metaphor of Catalyst).
>
>
>
Thanks, I'll take a look at it!

KR,
Gunnar

_______________________________________________
List: Catalyst [at] lists
Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst [at] lists/
Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/

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