Web Console next steps

[Felix Meschberger <fm...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

A few weeks ago Valentin Valchev proposed to migrate the Web Console to
JQuery UI to benefit from better integrated look and feel and simpler
tooling on the client side. A first preview has been provided in an
attachement to FELIX-1988.

The following enhancements to the Web Console will be coming along in
the near future and will ultimately lead to a 3.0 release of the Web
Console:

 * Support for localization (basically done, FELIX-151)
 * Add more convenience API to the AbstractWebConsolePlugin class
   (mostly moved from the internal BaseWebConsolePlugin class)
 * Create a new WebConsoleUtil class providing a number of
   utility methods currently in the AbstractWebConsolePlugin
 * Migrate the core plugins to JQuery UI to support a common
   look and feel of the core plugins and to lay the grounds for
   a common look and feel for external plugins.
 * Support for replacing the JQuery UI theme at "run time" and
   addition of themes using fragments.

Soft goals of thes changes:
 * Guarantee Backwards Compatibility with existing plugins !
 * Increase perceived performance of various plugins

We will currently not upgrade to JQuery 1.4 yet, because the latest
JQuery 1.7.2 release is still written against 1.3. As soon as JQuery UI
1.8 will be released we will migrate to JQuery UI 1.8/JQuery 1.4.

Regards
Felix