Greetings,
following our discussions at the Pycon 2009 Mailman sprint I've come up with
first draft of a/the future mailman 3 web interface.
The interface has changed a lot. Changes follow these principles:
* Simplify interface
* Focus on tasks
* Order and sort by task recurrance
* Reduce information overflow e.g. by hiding help messages
* Show help messages as bubbles when selected by user
* Remove instructions on using a web from
* Use default button texts e.g. "Save" instead of "Submit your changes"
See also: <http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Rest+client>
I've come up with a paper prototype, which you can download in an annotated
PDF by clicking at "Mailman webinterface draft" at the following location:
<http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Information+Architecture>
Important
The version you can download is _not a design_. It's a grid that creates a
structure, puts elements we need on a (HTML) page, orders and groups them
following the principles I've outlined above.
Please feel free to comment on it and ask questions. I've spent the last 5
days clicking the old interface, thinking and sitting before my current
proposal - I just might be blind to my own stupidity or brain dead by now. ;)
My goal is to agree on an information architecture, so we can go on and
create a design that combines functional requirements and aesthetics.
Once we've agreed on a design, we will create HTML templates and then we will
put them together with the upcoming REST client.
p@rick
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At Pycon, several of us sprinted on exposing Mailman 3's
administrative interface via RESTful services. I've been making slow
but steady progress since then on the infrastructure for this. With
the lazr.restful package married to the standard wsgiref module, I now
have the basics of its operation working. For example, if you start
the rest (http) server, you can now hit http://localhost:8001/3.0/
system and get a JSON response with the Mailman and Python version
strings.
This is the only URL currently implemented, and it's only GET.
Patrick, Andreas, Florian and I worked out some preliminary URL space
and we have a basic architectural design here: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/PyCon+Sprint+2009
I think this is going to work out pretty well, and now that I have the
basics working, my next step is to implement some simple POST, PUT, or
DELETE operations. If those also pan out, then I'll be merging my
development branch back into the trunk. For now, you can follow along
with this branch: lp:~barry/mailman/rest
Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions or comments.
-Barry
