On Apr 23, 2009, at 11:16 AM, Patrick Ben Koetter wrote:
following our discussions at the Pycon 2009 Mailman sprint I've come
up with first draft of a/the future mailman 3 web interface.
Patrick, thanks very much for doing this. I think it's a good way to
begin the discussions.
One thing that it would be good to think about is how MM3's improved
model can make navigation and configuration easier. For example, when
a user is thinking about her subscriptions, she needn't be constrained
to a list-centric view. In MM2, certain global operations were pure
hacks, and a user always had to see a list-centric view. For sites
that run many inter-related mailing lists, the user will probably want
to get a more general view of their subscriptions and options.
On Launchpad for example, they can go to one page that shows all their
subscriptions. Each mailing list that they are (or may) subscribe to
is listed on one page, and each has a pull down menu that lets the
user unsubscribe (i.e. not subscribed), subscribe with their
"preferred email address" (a concept not yet exposed in Mailman, but
which could be), or subscribed with a specific address.
This is nice because they can pretty easily manage all their
subscriptions from one page. You could imagine other global-ish
things on this page, like vacation settings, or default site-wide user
options. This page might also contain widgets for registering and
confirming additional email addresses linked to the user account.
On the list-admin side, another thing to think about is the
application of styles. A style needn't be just something that can be
applied when the list is created. Say for example, there is a "micro-
style" that lets them disable digests and select a standard
personalized footer. That might be a style available to the list
owner on their list page.
I do like the idea of a notifications area with a list of things a
user can do (i.e. the "3 pending"). This of course would be linked to
task-oriented pages for addressing those things. A user might also
see a list of registered emails that need confirming (with a link to
send another confirmation message).
That's all for now. -Barry