2. Humbled by Impossibility
At MODX we set out to accomplish impossible tasks.
We don’t always get there, and we have to take work
that pays the bill along the way. As the clock ticks this
year, how do we use open source more effectively to
battle the impossible?
3. What we are really good at
•
enabling site creators
•
staying abstract
4. What we could be better at
•
surviving open source
•
leveraging our talented community
•
working together
5.
6. What we are
•
small team
•
individual areas of expertise
•
MODX Professionals
•
core developers
11. Where we need more freedom
•
Manager Interface
•
Add-on Development
•
Creative Process
12. 2.3?
With 2.3 we cleaned many blemishes of the interface
and added some new features like the uberbar, but it
has been a bit of a ‘perfume on a pig’ project. With that
in mind, we look forward to breaking changes.
13. Media Manager
The front end of the media manager is in an alpha state
and needs to be integrated into a feature branch of the
modxcms/revolution repository where it will be hooked
up to the connectors that will make it talk to the MODX
Manager.
The Media Manager is targeted 2.3, but we will not delay
enacting a feature cut off for any one feature alone, so it
may wind up being 2.4.
14. Let’s be honest
We’ve fallen short when it comes to most things front
end related. User experience is poor. Defining layout in
JavaScript makes no sense at all. Everything takes way
too many clicks.
!
Our core is too dependent on any given JavaScript
library.
19. It’s HTML
Even if we are parsing JSON into markup (Angular), we
are working with markup. By bringing our technology
stack backwards, towards HTML 5 we won’t be left in
the dust as standards evolve.
20. The Irony
MODX can attribute success to leading the industry in
enabling site creators to have full control over their
content and how it is presented and delivered to users.
MODX is arguably the best open source HTML preprocessors in the world.
!
Yet we treat HTML in the Manager like an after thought.
21. Markup Last
In 2.x the manager was built markup last. I’m not sure if
anyone even knows what the markup actually looks like.
This has not proven an effective or performant way to
develop interfaces.
!
With ExtJS we wind up with something that skips over the
HTML box model and CSS leaving us with something we
kinda just hope works.
22. Markup First
If you know HTML you can join the party.
!
If we go back to HTML rather than stopping at ExtJS, we
can bring creative freedom back into a re-imagined
Manager.
23. Less of this
{
xtype: 'xdatetime'
,fieldLabel: _('resource_publishedon')
,description: '<b>[[*publishedon]]</b><br>'
,name: 'publishedon'
,id: 'modx-resource-publishedon'
,allowBlank: true
,dateFormat: MODx.config.manager_date_format
,timeFormat: MODx.config.manager_time_format
,dateWidth: 120
,timeWidth: 120
,value: config.record.publishedon
}
28. Any sneak-peaks?
Releasing 2.3 is a milestone for us. It’s the last minor
release before we can move onto the clean slate and
breaking changes of 3.0.
!
If you want to participate in the discussion of what
front end tools are proposed to power the next
Dashboard watch the matboard project on github:
https://github.com/jpdevries/matboard
32. How you can help
•
Be proactive
•
Ask how you can help
•
Get in Touch
•
Build Awesome
33. Get your *$%# and get out
MODX is powerful because it makes little assumptions
as to what you will be using it to build. A website that
serves HTML, or a web app that serves JSON…it makes
little difference to MODX.
So this time, nothing in the core that is too
assumptive.