User Experience Report (WAS Re: [Seaside] Nearing 2.3)

[Nevin Pratt]

Avi Bryant wrote:

>Nevin,
>
>Many thanks for taking the time to write up these comments.
>
>  
>
>I've just had a report of some problems with interactions with the
>debugger in 2.3, so it's definitely not 100% stable yet.  But good to know
>that you didn't run into any issues.
>  
>

You mean the web interface to the debugger (via the 'Debug' link)?

Ah, yes.  I also ran into that.  Annoying, but at least it still 
displays the stack, and so lets me know where to place a 'self halt' for 
"normal" debugging.

And yes, that's something I completely forgot to mention.

>  
>
>>2. Not surprisingly, some of the API has changed (I suppose in any
>>upgrade this is to be expected).  However, due to my own lack of
>>understanding of the Seaside internals, it wasn't immediately apparant
>>what the equivalent 2.3 functionality was.  Over the last few days, you
>>can find a number of my posts to this list that illustrate.
>>    
>>
>
>Are there any of these changes on which you're still unclear?
>  
>

I'm beginning to feel pretty comfortable with them, but I'm sure I will 
have more questions later :-).

>  
>
>>4. The lack of a pretty-printer for the html builder is annoying.  To
>>me, this is probably the single biggest downside of moving from 2.21 to 2.3.
>>    
>>
>
>I hear you.  It shouldn't be hard to add a pretty printer that's as good
>as the one in 2.2 (which is to say, not very - it adds extra space inside
>textareas, for example).  Doing it "right" is a harder problem that
>probably won't be solved before the 2.3 release.
>

I've never seen an html pretty-printer, for any product, that was 
perfect.  I personally think "close" is good enough.  After all, you 
don't particularly care to do very much mucking around directly with the 
html, do you?

I thought the 2.2 pretty-printer was just fine.  In fact, I thought it 
was *better* than many pretty-printers I've used/seen in the past, with 
other products.

>  
>
>>6. Many of the old examples are either completely broken, or partially
>>broken.  This will make it harder for new folks to start with 2.3 than
>>if they started with 2.21.
>>    
>>
>
>Which examples, broken in which ways?
>  
>

Perhaps "missing" would be a better word.  But, if you try to move the 
old "missing" example from the 2.2 sources, it then would qualify as 
"broken", which also explains why it is "missing" in the 2.3 sources.

As for partially broken, I think the config app itself qualifies.  In 
your own words (from a previous post):

>
>The configuration app (and, really, WAApplication) haven't kept pace with
>the flexibility offered by the new url management scheme.  So, yes, for
>the time being that's true.  Eventually the config app will evolve to
>better support current system.
>
>  
>

Thanks again for excellent work.

Nevin