We went live with some revisions to our Web site last Saturday, and some of them will be of interest to Zopeheads. The most significant new feature is a new version of the Sequence Builder, which is at: http://www.mems-exchange.org/z/process/builder/ Our site caters to designers of microfabricated devices, and we want users to assemble sequences of process steps, which they then submit to us for manufacturing. The Sequence Builder is a Web-based application for assembling sequences, sitting on top of our process database, which is a set of Python classes, and your sequence is saved using our Java database representation classes; Zope talks to Java servlets using XML-RPC. This makes saving/loading the ugliest code, because there's DTML code + Python code + the XML-RPC parameters + Java code involved. Doing a Web-based user interface for this sort of thing is hard, and our UI is still clunky in various ways; suggestions for improvements are welcome. I don't know of any other sites that tackle anything this complicated, because this is harder than "I want X copies of book Y"; instead, you're assembling a recipe where order matters. If anyone knows of sites that do something similar, we'd love to hear about them; maybe we can borrow some UI ideas from them. Anyway, feel free to play with the sequence builder. Getting a Web site registration is free, though you can't actually manufacture anything without signing an agreement and undergoing a credit check, but you can make sequences, save them, and load them up again; you don't have to worry about getting a bill for $5000 in the mail. Please report any bugs or problems you encounter (private e-mail only, please, to either me or to webmaster@mems-exchange.org). (DC people: feel free to add www.mems-exchange.org to the "Zope exits" section if you like. No credits page yet, though.) -- A.M. Kuchling http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/ All the evils of publishing can be traced to one source -- copyright. -- Stefan Stykolt, quoted by Kildare Dobbs in _The Living Name_ (1964)
[Andrew M. Kuchling, on Thu, 23 Dec 1999] :: We went live with some revisions to our Web site last Saturday, and :: some of them will be of interest to Zopeheads. The most significant :: new feature is a new version of the Sequence Builder, which is at: :: :: http://www.mems-exchange.org/z/process/builder/ Nice! I wonder if this might be applicable for improving the new Zope user download/install experience? It would be nice if www.zope.org could use Zope (duh) to implement a form-driven customized installation documentation builder. What do I mean by that? New users come to download area and fill out a form which asks them certain basic questions ... o OS o ZServer-only or Apache + ZServer, etc. o PCGI, FCGI o ZODB only or ZODB + DA o and so forth ... resulting in a customized, printable Web page of sequenced installation steps, devoid of any distracting noise about matters which aren't pertinent to their needs. The current situation is a turnoff to new adopters, as reflected by the number of people who fail to notice subtle requirements squirreled away in the numerous install docs. E.g., for someone to get started with Zope using Apache and FCGI (soon to be a very common thing), they have to read README.txt, INSTALL.txt, WEBSERVER.txt, /ZServer/INSTALL.txt, /ZServer/README.txt, /ZODB/INSTALL.txt, plus numerous others squirreled away in different directories. Then the docs send them to the Fast Engines Web site for download, after which they need to read numerous FCGI documents and also are encouraged to go to www.apache.org to fish around for official information about mods and configs. All in all, this can take hours, is potentially confusing, and is ripe for human error, leading to the same install questions being asked over and over on the Web site. Why not adopt a granular approach, decomposing all the factoids and serve them up to the "customer" on a need to know basis in one nice presentation? === (Now if we could just get RedHat to include Zope in the core distribution, so that we do all the minor upgrades using their whizzy new Update Agent!)
"Andrew M. Kuchling" wrote:
We went live with some revisions to our Web site last Saturday, and some of them will be of interest to Zopeheads. The most significant new feature is a new version of the Sequence Builder, which is at:
http://www.mems-exchange.org/z/process/builder/
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Doing a Web-based user interface for this sort of thing is hard, and our UI is still clunky in various ways; suggestions for improvements are welcome. I don't know of any other sites that tackle anything this complicated, because this is harder than "I want X copies of book Y"; instead, you're assembling a recipe where order matters. If anyone knows of sites that do something similar, we'd love to hear about them; maybe we can borrow some UI ideas from them.
This sounds like it could be generalized into a workflow product. Many business processes have order sensitive sequences. A generic workflow product that could handle editorial workflow for a content site as well as manufacturing workflow such as this, would be a _very nice_ addition to the Zope arsenal. So you might want to look at existing workflow products to get your ui ideas. Allaire Spectra has some nice ideas WRT creating workflow objects(sequences), then creating 'jobs' (workflow object _instances_), and handing off the tasks in the sequence to the appropriate people. I believe that it can also designate automatic handling of certain tasks without human intervention. HTH, Michael.
participants (3)
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Andrew M. Kuchling -
Michael R. Bernstein -
Patrick Phalen