[Revo] Mobile Manager, anyone?

Wow! Get a paypal button so people can donate!
Or a chipin http://chipin.com fundraiser (I have one )

Thanks for the comments so far. Keep ’m coming!

Shouldn’t it be built on http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/ as the whole MODX Revo Manager is built on Sencha? I think it’s better for maintaining as they use same code…? Would love to hear the thoughts about this from Shaun or another dev.

ExtJS in the manager processes stuff using connectors and processors, which is also something I’m trying to code into VersionX but that’s not something you can solely use in a JS framework - a server side script could just as easily open up a connection with a processor or connector.

Personally I think it’s okay to use a JS framework on mobile devices as it can improve UX very much. So maybe you can use the Sencha framework in a way that works (somehow) also without activated JS.

From my understanding of the Sencha framework so far is that it uses empty divs, and places stuff in there. I’ve not yet checked out Sencha Touch in detail, but if it acts similar that would mean you get a bunch of empty divs if you don’t have JS enabled.

I just checked out an example app built on Sencha, but it took 30 seconds to load on my Samsung Jet on a roaming network 3G+ - which may be an old crappy phone but that makes me wonder how it would respond to newer smartphones..

No start screen in traditional way. Using a bunch of icons as a stack on the iPhone would be cool.

Icons = HTTP requests, but is definitely much more usable. Thanks. Not sure on a stack though, my samsung jet doesn’t send out those fancy touch events to go through a stack

Ressource listing should maybe be in a iPhone way with sliding layers. So you’ll first get a list of folders, get into one, select one, select a option, then can edit or view. Complete list is (in my mind) unnecessary and should be replaced with a search module.

Okay.

If you want to support FC rules I think you must use Sencha as it’s currently done with JS and is coming PHP-coded later on in 2.1/2.2

I’ve not yet dived into this yet, but the rules are stored somewhere, so I would be really surprised if there wasn’t a safe way to access the rules server-side.

messaging system could be implemented but think that has low priority (so maybe later).

Sounds just like what I’ve been thinking..

there’s a need for a very intuitive, good writer. What I (or clients) would do with the MM actually is writing/editing a blog entry or sth. like that. Do you know iA Writer? That’s a cool one and we should consider to provide a good writing tool here, too.

iA Writer seems like an app for the iPad... does that integrate into form fields? Else I don’t see how that could be used.

AFAIK, there’s no RTEs for mobile devices yet, so this would probably end up being a simple form field with HTML, or something that would be translated from/to html code server-side, automatically adding the right tags.



Thanks for the support Mr. Haw. I wont do either of those until I got some specs finished up, or VersionX is working and I want to allow people to donate for that.

From my understanding of the Sencha framework so far is that it uses empty divs, and places stuff in there. I’ve not yet checked out Sencha Touch in detail, but if it acts similar that would mean you get a bunch of empty divs if you don’t have JS enabled.

That would be uncool. Maybe that changed in extJS4? Don’t know if touch ever had it?

I just checked out an example app built on Sencha, but it took 30 seconds to load on my Samsung Jet on a roaming network 3G+ - which may be an old crappy phone but that makes me wonder how it would respond to newer smartphones..

Built with Touch or with extJS? 30s is a no-go.

Icons = HTTP requests, but is definitely much more usable. Thanks. Not sure on a stack though, my samsung jet doesn’t send out those fancy touch events to go through a stack

Could be solved with imagemaps or thinks like css sprites.

iA Writer seems like an app for the iPad... does that integrate into form fields? Else I don’t see how that could be used.
AFAIK, there’s no RTEs for mobile devices yet, so this would probably end up being a simple form field with HTML, or something that would be translated from/to html code server-side, automatically adding the right tags.

Seems that you missed me. I thought about implementing something like this Writer app. But as you’ve said currently it seems that theres no rte for iPad.

I can totally see some of my clients using this especially if they had a blog setup on MODx and wanted to quickly post something or manage comments. Also, I had a client who was at a trade show and needed some quick changes asap. If they had the ability to use their phone they wouldn’t have had to call me. I could also see it for adding to photo galleries etc.

Excellent idea!!

Things like managing comments and galleries would require a custom implementation of the different addon cmps being used for that, too..

That sure is another step up, but definitely important to think about.

Quote from: Mark at Feb 28, 2011, 05:43 PM

Things like managing comments and galleries would require a custom implementation of the different addon cmps being used for that, too..
That sure is another step up, but definitely important to think about.

Just, in fact, it would be great to have a full mobile manager. But that’s a bunch of work, so let’s start with the real basics which actually are ressource editing / creating.

We’ve been playing around with Sencha Touch so I thought I would chip in here with a bit of what I know so far. After experimenting with Sencha Touch I tried to do the same thing with jQuerymobile, and I have to say that jQuerymobile was a lot easier to implement, though it’s immediately obvious that Sencha Touch can do a whole lot more if you need it to. But if I was to undertake this project, and I was OK with the device compatibility issues that come with Sencha, then I would definitely go with Sencha Touch. When you look at the code you create in Sencha Touch, it is very very similar to ExtJS. You would be able to leverage a lot of the code that exists in the MODX manager, and could even structure the application to use the exact same connectors/processors. That said, it would still be a daunting task...

Quote from: smooth-graphics at Feb 28, 2011, 03:45 PM

From my understanding of the Sencha framework so far is that it uses empty divs, and places stuff in there. I’ve not yet checked out Sencha Touch in detail, but if it acts similar that would mean you get a bunch of empty divs if you don’t have JS enabled.

That would be uncool. Maybe that changed in extJS4? Don’t know if touch ever had it?

Yeah it does do this, just like ExtJS does in the current manager. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing to require JS for content management, though the requirements might force your hand based on the devices you try to support. I’m pretty sure if it’s anything but and Android or iPhone, Sencha will not do the job for you properly.

Quote from: smooth-graphics at Feb 28, 2011, 03:45 PM

Icons = HTTP requests, but is definitely much more usable. Thanks. Not sure on a stack though, my samsung jet doesn’t send out those fancy touch events to go through a stack

Could be solved with imagemaps or thinks like css sprites.

All of the icons in Sencha Touch are embedded in the stylesheet as data, so you get everything in one http request (in terms of css and images). That said, the footprint is 300kb compared to jQuery’s ~60kb

If I’m not wrong,
ExtJS4 rewrote the UI concept by using SASS and Compass.

Thanks hk_modx, really nice to hear your experiences.

I just tried out the jQuery mobile docs/demo on my Jet, and it worked, even with javascript turned off.... Reasonably fast too. I like that it builds semantic markup and progressively enhances that. It even looks nice on my 17" laptop, lol.

Using the same connectors as the main manager sounds appealing, but the connectors simply output a json string which can easily be deciphered by any javascript or php, so that doesn’t neccesarily narrow it down to Sencha Touch.


I don’t want to pin this down to just Android and iOS - which is another vote towards jQuery Mobile....

Quote from: Mark at Mar 01, 2011, 02:36 PM

...jQuery Mobile....

+1