[Zope] Re: plone "vs." CMF was ... uPortal??

[Tim Lynch]

Have folks looked at uPortal (www.ja-sig.org)?  

The model uPortal provides is one of Views arranged by Tabs; each View is
composed of one or more Channels.  A Channel can be thought of as a window to
a particular web service (not uppercase Web Service, though certainly that is
supported) such as, perhaps, an RSS feed.  Tabs are typically arranged across
the top of the browser window: 'Home', 'Campus', 'MyPortal' ...  Clicking on a
Tab brings into view a browser window of the channels that make up that View.  

Users have the option to create their own "MyPortal" view, placing on that
page the channels they choose and arranging them in the order they choose.

Individual channels can be opened/closed/deattached/minimized.

I think the uPortal model is appealing, though pieces, such as the
screens for setting MyPortal's organization, are klunky.

If you attended last February's Python conference, maybe you saw the
canned NATO demo?  That was a sort-of uPortal-in-Zope design (with a really
slick javascript-based MyPortal organizer tool that definitely one-ups
uPortal's).  anyway

What I'd like to see in the CMF/Plone kit is some uPortal-like functionality.
For example, once I, as regular joe-user, register with a site, I'd like to
be able to arrange my home page as I see fit.  Maybe put the Calendar "channel"
on my home page at the top-left in place of the Merchandise "channel" ...

'course there's no real content management capabilities in uPortal and in
a dozen other ways uPortal comes up short compared to Zope/CMF/Plone ...
but it does demonstrate some cool ideas.


---
Tim Lynch
National Agriculture Library
Beltsville, MD
tlynch@nal.usda.gov



> > (...)
> >
> > And after customizing Plone for ZopeZen, I have to say its a lot better
> base
> > to start with on anything CMF related. The skin is now a tenth of the
> size.
> > --
> >   Andy McKay
> >   www.agmweb.ca
> >
> 
> I like Plone's graphic design, but after diving into the guts of CMF's
> default skins and compare them to Plone's I still need to know whether Plone
> is much more than a set of templates over zpt templates, or not. (I must
> confess I haven't read any of the documentation but I did installed many of
> its releases including Andy's installer.)
> 
> When I look at Plone I see its graphic designer's decisions all over the
> site. Ok, I know I can chage many of them by modifying the stylesheet, but
> if want other kind of modifications, if I want to have the commands at
> different places than its defaults, for instance, I still need to perform
> them skin by skin, am I right?.
> 
> In my humble opinion there's still room for a new general-purpose CMF skin
> that takes over the repetitive tasks during the skin customization process,
> without the usual constraints that come as a result of being template-based.
> Something like a skin-control layer that allows developers to focus on
> features rather on just code, but powerful enough to allow every level of
> per-case customization, when needed.
> 
> I agree that Plone has suceeded at driving people's attention to CMF/Zope,
> but from a developer point of view I should tell, IMHO again,  Plone neither
> can be opposed to CMF, neither Plone is CMF.  :)
> 
> 
> Ausum