[Zope] Simple "What You See Is What You Edit" feature

[Chris Fassnacht]

I know this kind of thing is probably old hat to ZoPros, but as a new user I
found it wonderfully simple and powerful, and I just wanted to share my
growing appreciation of Zope with others.

I'm designing a Zope-base website in which I and a few others handle the
structure and administration, but the authoring of the content is spread
across a number of other users.  One thing I've been trying to do is to make
access to Zope's web-based management interface as simple as possible for
those who'll be adding content.  Today I had one of those minor epiphanies
when I realized I could put access to the management screen for any given
particular page on the page itself.  So I just dropped the following three
lines into my standard_html_footer object:

<dtml-if "AUTHENTICATED_USER.has_role(['Author', 'Manager'])">
  <a href="manage">Edit</a>
</dtml-if>

and, voila!, I've got a link that shows up at the bottom of every page, but
only for appropriately authorized users (as defined by their Roles), that
takes them directly to the management screen for that page to do instant
editing.  It only took a minute, but it goes a long ways toward easing the
barrier between the web-page-as-seen and the web-page-as-editable-document
for many users.  Too cool.


Chris Fassnacht