MODX Manager - can we make improvements?

Ah. Never really noticed, since I lounge around working on a 13" laptop for the most part. I suppose it would be annoying on a bigger screen.

Quote from: easylancer at Sep 23, 2013, 08:25 AM

am a strong advocate of Angular but believe it would still leave us with a bit of a steep learning curve for anyone who is already familiar with working the jQuery way or ExtJS way. I think this topic will require a bit more investigating in order to come up with a viable solution that will work for everyone.

I'm starting to see the reasoning behind hoping on the Angular bandwagon, but still need some convincing. I feel like it is the Devil. It promises to fulfill my desires as long as I forfeit my soul belief that the web is built on HTML.

Quote from: pdincubus at Sep 18, 2013, 10:29 AM

I've got to set up SASS, Grunt, Node, etc etc etc and figure all that out too.

Just want to clarify that while we have adopted a Grunt based Sass workflow for contributing to the MODX Manager, you do not have to use either one of them. If you are creating your own custom Manager theme, you can use the tools of your choice. Also, since raw CSS is valid Sass just as raw HTML is a valid Chunk you can submit a pull request with raw CSS added to say, the bottom of index.scss. You don't have to write any "Sass" but you would of course have to test your CSS manually assuming you don't have Grunt processing your Sass into index.css.

With the direction we are heading we need to step up our front end game. I find it interesting that there is resistance to adopting better and proven front end tools such as Sass within the MODX community. At the end of the day what is MODX? It's an open source preprocessor predominately used for HTML. Sass is an open source CSS preprocessor.

With a little time invested, I think if you love building sites with MODX you'll love writing CSS with Sass.

As always, feel free to ping me with any Sass or Grunt questions and concerns. I understand it is yet another set of tools to add to your never ending web developer tool belt and am trying to work on lessening the learning curve to get us there.

Quote from: dinocorn at Nov 24, 2013, 03:01 AM

With the direction we are heading we need to step up our front end game. I find it interesting that there is resistance to adopting better and proven front end tools such as Sass within the MODX community. At the end of the day what is MODX? It's an open source preprocessor predominately used for HTML. Sass is an open source CSS preprocessor.

With a little time invested, I think if you love building sites with MODX you'll love writing CSS with Sass.

Sass is good, but a lot more complicated to setup (even more on Windows machine) and more verbose than its main concurrent Less.

I believe that proficient front end devs should be able to work with either of them, but the KISS principle is much more in line with Less philosophy.

That being said, Sass is a very welcome addition to the Modx workflow and i doubt we'll see much contributors crying that Modx sucks because it uses Sass over Less (or any css preprocessors).

I strive to keep things un-opinionted when it comes to LESS vs Sass. That is why NeatPages and Yomonger both let you choose between Sass, LESS or raw CSS.
http://neatpag.es
http://devries.jp/yomonger

That said, I'll never write another line of LESS again. I worked with it for about two years before switching to Sass and have never looked back. A perfect example of why: valid CSS is not always valid LESS! That's absurd, it should be backwards compatible.

Quote from: dinocorn at Nov 24, 2013, 03:31 AM

I strive to keep things un-opinionted when it comes to LESS vs Sass. That is why NeatPages and Yomonger both let you choose between Sass, LESS or raw CSS.
http://neatpag.es
http://devries.jp/yomonger

That said, I'll never write another line of LESS again. I worked with it for about two years before switching to Sass and have never looked back. A perfect example of why: valid CSS is not always valid LESS! That's absurd, it should be backwards compatible.

Never ? Even if Modx decide to use Bootstrap ? :p

Quote from: lossendae at Nov 24, 2013, 03:39 AM

Never ? Even if Modx decide to use Bootstrap ? :p

It is actually funny you mention that. You can probably deduce that I'm not a huge fan of Bootstrap, but I do really like FuelUX.
http://exacttarget.github.io/fuelux/

So much that I started messing around with a Bootstrap to Sass translator.
https://github.com/thomas-mcdonald/bootstrap-sass#bootstrap-for-sass

Quote from: dinocorn at Nov 24, 2013, 02:26 AM

Quote from: easylancer at Sep 23, 2013, 08:25 AM

am a strong advocate of Angular but believe it would still leave us with a bit of a steep learning curve for anyone who is already familiar with working the jQuery way or ExtJS way. I think this topic will require a bit more investigating in order to come up with a viable solution that will work for everyone.

I'm starting to see the reasoning behind hoping on the Angular bandwagon, but still need some convincing. I feel like it is the Devil. It promises to fulfill my desires as long as I forfeit my soul belief that the web is built on HTML.

I am a bit shocked by this, what is the percentage of the MODX userbase that use the manager with javascript turned off? (I think its 0, since it just doesn't work). Based on these facts, at what point does AngularJS destroy this experience, also you should note that users want a webapp to feel like a desktop app, hence why folks don't mind having apps fully JS enabled. If there is such a big concern about a non-js manager why haven't one being built to this day. I feel like there are personal dislikes getting mixed with what is good for the CMS and the community in general, as I stated before, AngularJS has a steep learning curve but this is becoming less and less on a daily basis due to the amount of documentation you will find online for AngularJS now.

Quote from: dinocorn at Nov 24, 2013, 03:31 AM

I strive to keep things un-opinionted when it comes to LESS vs Sass. That is why NeatPages and Yomonger both let you choose between Sass, LESS or raw CSS.
http://neatpag.es
http://devries.jp/yomonger

That said, I'll never write another line of LESS again. I worked with it for about two years before switching to Sass and have never looked back. A perfect example of why: valid CSS is not always valid LESS! That's absurd, it should be backwards compatible.

I have been using both LESS and SASS for years and must say I haven't come across this with LESS. Yet again the never use LESS again statement is a bit over the top. So if the community decides we want LESS to be used instead of SASS, we are likely to get a no from you since you are in-charge of MODX frontend dev tools. In my experience this is not inline with community driven open source project. As lossendae stated, some folks are more familiar with LESS, find it easier to setup on all OS and generally get on with the syntax because it is more CSS like.

Quote from: easylancer at Nov 24, 2013, 03:58 AM

I have been using both LESS and Sass for years and must say I haven't come across this with LESS. Yet again the never use LESS again statement is a bit over the top. So if the community decides we want LESS to be used instead of Sass, we are likely to get a no from you since you are in-charge of MODX frontend dev tools. In my experience this is not inline with community driven open source project. As lossendae stated, some folks are more familiar with LESS, find it easier to setup on all OS and generally get on with the syntax because it is more CSS like.

Try compiling this using LESS. Was bombing on the gradient syntax for me the other day, which is an issue I've run into before with LESS.
https://gist.github.com/jpdevries/790c666f605591db40d2

I think I need to clarify that I'm striving to put more creative freedom into developing for the Manager, not take it away. Just because I'll never prefer to use LESS again doesn't mean the community can't. Again, Yomonger has an option to use LESS.