[Zope-dev] Yeat another ZMI improvement idea...

[Adrian Hungate]

From: <sean.upton@uniontrib.com>

> After playing around with Evan's ZMIBookmarks (which I like), I got to
> thinking about persisting (or semi-persisting) other user preferences for
> ZMI shortcuts.  In some word processors, the font drop-down remembers the
> last few choices of fonts you selected and puts them at the top of the
> drop-down list.  This is really nice if you have a bunch of fonts
installed
> on your system.  I think the same concept could apply to adding Zope
> products in the ZMI, provided you have a fairly decent number of products
> installed in Zope, you have to scroll every time you want to add something
> that doesn't begin with the letter A.

Have you looked at PatchKit? It contains a patch that allows you to "hide"
products you don't use. It uses some browser cookies, and some data stored
as an attribute of the Control_Panel (For global settings).

> So, I'm thinking shortcuts at the top of the contents in the drop-down for
> adding an object to a container.  It would be nice if there was a way to
put
> the 3-5 most recently used products at the top of the list on a
user-by-user
> basis, and persist those user preferences somehow (this really is a good
> thing, since, for example, DBAs might only need to add ZSQL Methods,
Python
> Scripts, and DA objects).
>
> I would be interested in creating something like this, but I'm interested
in
> getting list feedback on:
>
> 1 - the best way to persist the user preferences, and

Cookie?

> 2 - How one would go about tracking what items were selected, since each
> product maintains its own add forms, and can't be relied upon to update a
> registry of said user preference...

modify the contents page of ObjectManger.

> 3 - the best way to approach the UI (I assume a monkey patch to the DTML
for
> OFS.Folder's manage_main and a simple registry of preferences that can be
> used to populate the top of the list based upon the user's login)

This is actually objectmangers page, Folder has almost nothing to it.

This looks a lot like an idea that would lend itself to PatchKit - And you
could let it do a lot of the work of actually patching for you.

Adrian...

--
Adrian Hungate
EMail: adrian@haqa.co.uk
Web: http://www.haqa.co.uk