UI improvements future plans

On 23.05.2018 we have had a workshop where we discussed the proposed features. Even though the general feedback was positive and none of the features was rejected, there's still a lot of work to do to take the effort to the production-grade level.

Below is the proposed mind-map with possible further steps that we could take (the source XMind file is also attached).

UI improvements.xmind

Rough effort estimation

Below can be found a table with description and coarse estimates of the possible further steps (time-wise* and priority-wise**).

* (Time-wise the tasks are estimated relatively to Aleksandr Pchelintcev, i.e. if the assignee of the issue wasn't fiddling with the UI thoroughly lately, some time has to be added to get in the context.)

** (Priority-wise the tasks go from the brightest ... ... to the coldest )

New features

Name	Description:	Estimate SP	Depended upon by Resurface?	Delivery
Rest integration	Develop an alternative to JCR for browsing and form viewing/editing. See the synergy with the REST client (or use some other approach). Goal - to have easily configurable REST browser and REST-based forms User benefit: View and manipulate data from REST sources directly in a Magnolia app. Save time and effort. Easily configure apps that operate on REST sources. Avoid 4-6 weeks of Java development. Faster integrations. See Easy Integration Stories MGNLUI-4439 - Getting issue details... STATUS	13	No	Validate foundation, APIs before next major. Ship with new major of REST Client any time.
Cross-field validation support	The field hierarchy is now kept in the form binders, so technically it is available while form is active and could be injectable in the validators and/or fields themselves. Need to see how to better expose such hierarchy and how to address at least some of the issues related to the topic. User benefit: See only relevant values in form fields. Make fewer mistakes and fill the form faster. Populate and validate the options in one field based on what the user chooses in another field. Timebox to 13 SP, possible followed by smaller efforts. DEV-920 - Getting issue details... STATUS Enables: MGNLUI-2542 - Getting issue details... STATUS	13	No	Before 6.0 because new APIs are introduced.
Forms with alternative layout	Ship 1-2 alternative ways to layout forms. The APIs are in place, even some implementation has started. User benefit: Usability: Set address fields visually apart from other fields. Related controls are easier to identify. Make it easier for people to focus on smaller and more manageable groups. Reduce visual clutter and only show relevant information. Progressive disclosure: Defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone. DEV-983 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	Maybe	DEV-983 Before 6.0
Validation within composite fields	Re-use 'validation bubble' effort from the past, try to provide universal validation/description UI regardless of the layout. User benefit: Pinpoint which sub-field in a more complex field has invalid entry, so the user knows what to fix. DEV-992 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	Yes, consider	Ideally in 6.0
[optional] Master-detail sub-app	Test the flexibility of the new UI framework views and combine browser and detail in one sub-app (should be as easy as binding the pre-created form to the current selection in e.g. tree view) User benefit: Select an item in an app and edit it immediately. Make small edits quickly without having to jump from one subapp to another. For example, scheduling many events. Several small edits. DEV-991 - Getting issue details... STATUS	5	No	after 6.0, independently
[optional] Filterable columns in Grids	The PoC solution contains column renderer which allows to filter tree grid by path. Consider productising such feature and see how would it be possible to incorporate it into configuration and implementation of the content views. User benefit: Search content by title, creation date, author, duration, rank, or any combination of properties. (Find Bar does a full-text search and serves a different use case.) Find items faster. Configure searchable properties for an app so that they are relevant for users. DEV-993 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	after 6.0, independently

Essential features

Name	Description	Estimate SP	Depended upon by Resurface?	Delivery
Chooser dialog	DEV-974 - Getting issue details... STATUS	13	No	6.0
Multi-value field UI	DEV-976 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	6.0
Migrate more fields	DEV-978 - Getting issue details... STATUS	21	No	6.0
Port more column renderers	DEV-977 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	6.0, grid doesn't know about the old renderers. Compatibility wrapper is an alternative.
Harden JCR browsing implementation	Remaining JCR data source configuration, full-text search support in lists etc. DEV-1000 - Getting issue details... STATUS	13	No	6.0
Multi-selection support in browser	ValueContext needs generalisation (to conveniently cover the single vs multi selection cases) DEV-999 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	6.0
Harden DS observation mechanism	ContentChangeEvent replacement needs to be hardened: should be memory-leak safe, should be clear, corner-cases should be considered. Observation should also work for the case of the detail sub-app DEV-1001 - Getting issue details... STATUS	13	No	ideally 6.0
Re-instate previews in actionbar	Re-add the feature (should be simple with ValueContext). Question the abstraction of ImageProvider. DEV-1002 - Getting issue details... STATUS	5	No	can be after 6.0 but some work must be done before 6.0
Keyboard shortcuts in the grids and forms	Currently not ported over from the old implementation. Need to see also how to do it better. DEV-1005 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	6.0, otherwise keyboard shortcuts won't work. Can be timeboxed to 5 SP.
Port form-dialog	Thanks to the view-contexts and view improvements it is probably possible to make a form dialog implementation that shares most of the code with the detail sub-app, still requires quite some work. DEV-1006 - Getting issue details... STATUS	8	No	ideally in 6.0 but could be later
Implement Vaadin 8 - based inline row editing	Grid/TreeGrid has in-built editor API, which can play together with parts of the from framework improvements that we introduced (binders/propertysets etc). Add support for inline editing in Grid/TreeGrid DEV-1003 - Getting issue details... STATUS	1-2 weeks

Migration strategy

Name	Description	Estimate	Resurface	Delivery
App descriptor migration	Think of a strategy (special sub-app that takes an old descriptor and translates to the new or some hybrid descriptor). Consider migrating whatever is easily migrated (fields, columns etc). DEV-989 - Getting issue details... STATUS	2-3 weeks
Legacy action support	It seems to be fairly sufficient to expose the selection context a set of JcrNodeAdapter to make some UI actions work. See how many we can cover by this and what is needed to cover more. DEV-990 - Getting issue details... STATUS	1-2 weeks

Configuration

Name	Description	Estimate	Resurface	Delivery
Content type powered config	Requires content type solution to be available. Would be nice to shave some config parts off the detail sub-app and form dialogs. DEV-1007 - Getting issue details... STATUS	1 week (once content types are in)
Apply the type references where possible	New UI improvements do not make the descriptors any leaner as is (in order to not make the configuration less powerful). With type references for whatever possible we could mitigate this fact. DEV-1008 - Getting issue details... STATUS	2-2.5 weeks

Actions

Name

Description

Estimate

Resurface

Delivery

Re-start async action effort

Use Java 8 instead of Quartz. Try to ship the asynchronous-ness as a trait/mix-in of an action, not as some base abstract class

2 weeks

Misc

Name	Description	Estimate
Unit testing	The effort is almost not covered by unit tests (the state of the API and implementation was fluctuating too much so far) DEV-997 - Getting issue details... STATUS (more issue to be created ???)	3 weeks (+ maybe more since we'll need even more tests before final release)
UI tests	See if it would be possible to re-use the UI tests for our own apps when they are ported to the new framework	2 weeks
UI push support	finally incorporate Vaadin's push support	1 week

Unknown unknowables

There are probably bugs in the new UI implementation, maybe there will be potential blockers even. I can't estimate that, but I'd add at least 2.5-3 weeks for that on top of the total estimate.

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