Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

I made some progress on the new UI yesterday during a long train ride.
 I started converting the opening page, the message page and the
signup page.

There are still a few open points. For example....:
* Footer on opening page isn't centered
* Comet integration on front page isn't working yet
* Blue background on sign-up page isn't appearing
* Comet integration on mesage page isn't working
* For some reason,  <signup:credentials/> on the sign-up page isn't working
* Haven't even started customizing the texts on the opening page.

What is working:
* Login - if you already have a user.
* Creating a message
* Search

I added all the files to the new-ui branch.  I'm hoping it works
there. I didn't use the branch to develop but copied everything into
an existing deployment based on the current code-base.

Maybe on the train ride home this evening - I'll try and convert one
of the other page (Actions, etc...)

D.

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

Agreed. Other parts of the web-ui are more impt.

Right now, I have left the various text components with default filler
text. My next step was to place the contents in a resource file for
customers to be able to change it.

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Ethan Jewett <es...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What are we trying to accomplish with the welcome screen? It seems
> that is the question we need to answer and will pretty much decide for
> us if we need a tag cloud, messages, or something else entirely. Once
> we decide that, we should be able to implement whatever it is.
>
> For now, the fastest solution is probably something static, which we
> can replace once the final approach is decided/designed.
>
> Ethan
>
> On Saturday, December 26, 2009, Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> But the new Twitter home page does have trending topics - probably not
>> changed in real-time though. Maybe we could have a tag cloud that
>> isn't comet-based.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>>> Just to let you know, fetching messages from the public timeline is
>>> currently not cached. It probably doesn't make much sense either
>>> because it would then flood the cache too quickly with messages which
>>> are not likely to be requested again. This would result in messages
>>> being flushed from the cache too quickly.
>>>
>>> On neither of the popular microblogging sites (Twitter and identi.ca)
>>> is the public timeline updated in real-time. This makes sense because
>>> the performance overhead is significant and the benefit fairly small.
>>> In light of the recent performance benchmarks I'm not sure it's wise
>>> to update the public timeline in real-time. Maybe some sampling would
>>> emulate real-time reasonably well?
>>>
>>> Anyway, sending 20 messages instead of 1 would might waste some
>>> bandwidth, but will not cause such a performance overhead as hitting
>>> the DB.
>>>
>>> Finally, the tag clouds you see on the main page are currently based
>>> on the friends' timeline, so it is not the same for different users.
>>> It could be generated out of the last messages of the public
>>> timeline, but then it's all again about fetching the messages.
>>>
>>> Not that I'm against having some real-time functionality on the front
>>> page, but I just wanted to note that this goes beyond what just the
>>> new UI involves.
>>>
>>
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Ethan Jewett <es...@gmail.com>]

What are we trying to accomplish with the welcome screen? It seems
that is the question we need to answer and will pretty much decide for
us if we need a tag cloud, messages, or something else entirely. Once
we decide that, we should be able to implement whatever it is.

For now, the fastest solution is probably something static, which we
can replace once the final approach is decided/designed.

Ethan

On Saturday, December 26, 2009, Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But the new Twitter home page does have trending topics - probably not
> changed in real-time though. Maybe we could have a tag cloud that
> isn't comet-based.
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>> Just to let you know, fetching messages from the public timeline is
>> currently not cached. It probably doesn't make much sense either
>> because it would then flood the cache too quickly with messages which
>> are not likely to be requested again. This would result in messages
>> being flushed from the cache too quickly.
>>
>> On neither of the popular microblogging sites (Twitter and identi.ca)
>> is the public timeline updated in real-time. This makes sense because
>> the performance overhead is significant and the benefit fairly small.
>> In light of the recent performance benchmarks I'm not sure it's wise
>> to update the public timeline in real-time. Maybe some sampling would
>> emulate real-time reasonably well?
>>
>> Anyway, sending 20 messages instead of 1 would might waste some
>> bandwidth, but will not cause such a performance overhead as hitting
>> the DB.
>>
>> Finally, the tag clouds you see on the main page are currently based
>> on the friends' timeline, so it is not the same for different users.
>> It could be generated out of the last messages of the public
>> timeline, but then it's all again about fetching the messages.
>>
>> Not that I'm against having some real-time functionality on the front
>> page, but I just wanted to note that this goes beyond what just the
>> new UI involves.
>>
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

But the new Twitter home page does have trending topics - probably not
changed in real-time though. Maybe we could have a tag cloud that
isn't comet-based.


On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
> Just to let you know, fetching messages from the public timeline is
> currently not cached. It probably doesn't make much sense either
> because it would then flood the cache too quickly with messages which
> are not likely to be requested again. This would result in messages
> being flushed from the cache too quickly.
>
> On neither of the popular microblogging sites (Twitter and identi.ca)
> is the public timeline updated in real-time. This makes sense because
> the performance overhead is significant and the benefit fairly small.
> In light of the recent performance benchmarks I'm not sure it's wise
> to update the public timeline in real-time. Maybe some sampling would
> emulate real-time reasonably well?
>
> Anyway, sending 20 messages instead of 1 would might waste some
> bandwidth, but will not cause such a performance overhead as hitting
> the DB.
>
> Finally, the tag clouds you see on the main page are currently based
> on the friends' timeline, so it is not the same for different users.
> It could be generated out of the last messages of the public
> timeline, but then it's all again about fetching the messages.
>
> Not that I'm against having some real-time functionality on the front
> page, but I just wanted to note that this goes beyond what just the
> new UI involves.
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org>]

Just to let you know, fetching messages from the public timeline is
currently not cached. It probably doesn't make much sense either
because it would then flood the cache too quickly with messages which
are not likely to be requested again. This would result in messages
being flushed from the cache too quickly.

On neither of the popular microblogging sites (Twitter and identi.ca)
is the public timeline updated in real-time. This makes sense because
the performance overhead is significant and the benefit fairly small.
In light of the recent performance benchmarks I'm not sure it's wise
to update the public timeline in real-time. Maybe some sampling would
emulate real-time reasonably well?

Anyway, sending 20 messages instead of 1 would might waste some
bandwidth, but will not cause such a performance overhead as hitting
the DB.

Finally, the tag clouds you see on the main page are currently based
on the friends' timeline, so it is not the same for different users.
It could be generated out of the last messages of the public
timeline, but then it's all again about fetching the messages.

Not that I'm against having some real-time functionality on the front
page, but I just wanted to note that this goes beyond what just the
new UI involves.

Re: Progress on new UI

[Markus Kohler <ma...@gmail.com>]

Hi,
I vote for no links.
Markus
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -- Alan Kay


On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
<yo...@gmail.com>wrote:

> We could go to the results, like twitter does it today or their home page.
> But I think we should just create a tag cloud without links for now, just
> to make it all go a bit faster.
> We can always go back and make changes later. What do you think?
>
> On 23. des. 2009, at 09.48, Richard Hirsch wrote:
>
> > What happens when user clicks on the tag cloud? Or is the tag cloud
> > created without links?
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
> > <yo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Why don't we change it so that the opening page displays the tag cloud
> instead?
> >>
> >>
> >> On 23. des. 2009, at 08.33, Richard Hirsch wrote:
> >>
> >>> The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
> >>> timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
> >>> is activity on the platform.
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org>
> wrote:
> >>>>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
> >>>>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
> >>>>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
> >>>>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
> >>>>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match
> the
> >>>>> ids in the existing javascript.
> >>>>
> >>>> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
> >>>> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
> >>>> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
> >>>> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
> >>>>
> >>
> >>
>
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

Good idea.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
<yo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We could go to the results, like twitter does it today or their home page.
> But I think we should just create a tag cloud without links for now, just to make it all go a bit faster.
> We can always go back and make changes later. What do you think?
>
> On 23. des. 2009, at 09.48, Richard Hirsch wrote:
>
>> What happens when user clicks on the tag cloud? Or is the tag cloud
>> created without links?
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
>> <yo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Why don't we change it so that the opening page displays the tag cloud instead?
>>>
>>>
>>> On 23. des. 2009, at 08.33, Richard Hirsch wrote:
>>>
>>>> The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
>>>> timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
>>>> is activity on the platform.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>>>>>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
>>>>>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
>>>>>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
>>>>>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
>>>>>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
>>>>>> ids in the existing javascript.
>>>>>
>>>>> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
>>>>> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
>>>>> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
>>>>> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Anne Kathrine Petterøe <yo...@gmail.com>]

We could go to the results, like twitter does it today or their home page.
But I think we should just create a tag cloud without links for now, just to make it all go a bit faster.
We can always go back and make changes later. What do you think?

On 23. des. 2009, at 09.48, Richard Hirsch wrote:

> What happens when user clicks on the tag cloud? Or is the tag cloud
> created without links?
> 
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
> <yo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why don't we change it so that the opening page displays the tag cloud instead?
>> 
>> 
>> On 23. des. 2009, at 08.33, Richard Hirsch wrote:
>> 
>>> The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
>>> timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
>>> is activity on the platform.
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>>>>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
>>>>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
>>>>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
>>>>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
>>>>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
>>>>> ids in the existing javascript.
>>>> 
>>>> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
>>>> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
>>>> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
>>>> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
>>>> 
>> 
>> 

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

What happens when user clicks on the tag cloud? Or is the tag cloud
created without links?

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Anne Kathrine Petterøe
<yo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why don't we change it so that the opening page displays the tag cloud instead?
>
>
> On 23. des. 2009, at 08.33, Richard Hirsch wrote:
>
>> The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
>> timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
>> is activity on the platform.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>>>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
>>>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
>>>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
>>>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
>>>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
>>>> ids in the existing javascript.
>>>
>>> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
>>> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
>>> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
>>> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
>>>
>
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Anne Kathrine Petterøe <yo...@gmail.com>]

Why don't we change it so that the opening page displays the tag cloud instead?


On 23. des. 2009, at 08.33, Richard Hirsch wrote:

> The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
> timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
> is activity on the platform.
> 
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
>>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
>>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
>>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
>>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
>>> ids in the existing javascript.
>> 
>> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
>> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
>> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
>> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
>> 

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

The idea is that the display on the opening page is from the public
timeline and is read-only. It is only used for users to see that there
is activity on the platform.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org> wrote:
>> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
>> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
>> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
>> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
>> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
>> ids in the existing javascript.
>
> Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
> because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
> reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
> conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.
>

Re: Progress on new UI

[Vassil Dichev <vd...@apache.org>]

> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
> ids in the existing javascript.

Wait, I thought we decided against sending just one message for now,
because of many limitations of this approach. For instance, if you
reply to a message, the old message will become a part of a
conversation, but will not have an updated conversation link.

Re: Progress on new UI

[Anne Kathrine Petterøe <yo...@gmail.com>]

Dave,

We use the "new-ui" branch as a repository for the HTML+CSS files for the new UI.
We have made several changes to trunk/server sinc the new-ui branch got created, so we don't use it to develop on.
I suggest you use Dick's approach:
" I didn't use the branch to develop but copied everything into an existing deployment based on the current code-base."
This way we make sure we always developed against the latest code-base.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Anne



On 22. des. 2009, at 22.37, Richard Hirsch wrote:

> My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
> first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
> back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
> existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
> (display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
> ids in the existing javascript.
> 
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Dave Briccetti <da...@davebsoft.com> wrote:
>> I’m confused about where things are. I can svn checkout and mvn jetty:run
>> from both trunk/server and branches/new-ui. Running the latter I see what’s
>> obviously a new UI. Is this where I want to be, to observe the comet
>> problem?

Re: Progress on new UI

[Richard Hirsch <hi...@gmail.com>]

My new changes are in the branch. The first challenge is to get the
first page working with the public timeline. We have to add a comet
back-end that feeds just one message instead of 40 (which is the
existing implementation) and then map the existing javascript
(display_messages.js) to the new ids or change the new ui to match the
ids in the existing javascript.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Dave Briccetti <da...@davebsoft.com> wrote:
> I’m confused about where things are. I can svn checkout and mvn jetty:run
> from both trunk/server and branches/new-ui. Running the latter I see what’s
> obviously a new UI. Is this where I want to be, to observe the comet
> problem?

Re: Progress on new UI

[Dave Briccetti <da...@davebsoft.com>]

I’m confused about where things are. I can svn checkout and mvn  
jetty:run from both trunk/server and branches/new-ui. Running the  
latter I see what’s obviously a new UI. Is this where I want to be, to  
observe the comet problem?

Re: Progress on new UI

[Anne Kathrine Petterøe <yo...@gmail.com>]

w0000t!
Thank you Dick :-D

I should be able to get some work done on the UI between Xmas and new year.

/Anne


On 22. des. 2009, at 06.32, Richard Hirsch wrote:

> I made some progress on the new UI yesterday during a long train ride.
> I started converting the opening page, the message page and the
> signup page.
> 
> There are still a few open points. For example....:
> * Footer on opening page isn't centered
> * Comet integration on front page isn't working yet
> * Blue background on sign-up page isn't appearing
> * Comet integration on mesage page isn't working
> * For some reason,  <signup:credentials/> on the sign-up page isn't working
> * Haven't even started customizing the texts on the opening page.
> 
> What is working:
> * Login - if you already have a user.
> * Creating a message
> * Search
> 
> I added all the files to the new-ui branch.  I'm hoping it works
> there. I didn't use the branch to develop but copied everything into
> an existing deployment based on the current code-base.
> 
> Maybe on the train ride home this evening - I'll try and convert one
> of the other page (Actions, etc...)
> 
> D.