[FM Discuss] UI Challenge

[John Curwood]

I think that if possible we need to make it less technical (more along
the line of drop-boxes or tick boxes than a form where we can write in
css code).  FM has a pretty technical use base, so for each book being
exported, there will in all likelyhood be more than one person working
on the book who knows css and can then type in the code for export.

However with Booki, there will be user groups from a large variety of
backgrounds and not all groups will include members who are fluent in
css.  For example outside of FM of everyone I know (including friends,
family and work colleagues) there is only one other person who has any
knowledge of css.

That said we don't want to lose the ability to write up the css code.  I
would say that we would want a layout page to be similar to the export
page in that it had a simple and an advanced layout.  The simple would
contain a less technical more intuitive interface for styling the main
elements of the book, and the advanced interface would contain the
actual css code.

I'll have a go at mocking up what I mean and send it in.

Cheers,

John


On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 12:50 -0400, Joshua Facemyer wrote:
> I like the idea of an online styler.
> 
> Since the pdf needs to be rendered and transmitted each time, maybe have 
> something simple like an html form with all of the available elements in 
> a sample layout (you'd have all of the h classes, regular paragraphs, 
> images within the text with different layout classes, etc).  Even allow 
> the sample texts to be changed.  Make it short, like 2 pages.
> 
> Under each element in the form, give a text box for css for that element.
> 
> The user changes what he likes and clicks "preview" which will then 
> refresh the preview pane / window / whatever with the updated pdf/png/etc.
> 
> JF
> 
> On 08-31-10 3:43 AM, Aleksandar Erkalovic wrote:
> > well, we use webkit engine to render html to pdf (plus some other
> > tools). and as you guessed, it is not really possible to use browser
> > engine (not even when it is webkit based, because it might not be the
> > same version of webkit) to make preview pages. you must support all
> > the features, bugs, and etc... the only way is to use the same tools
> > to get 100% same result. and that means to use objavi to render it.
> > now, it does not have to be "download" option, it can easily be some
> > kind of embeded pdf viewer, but it has to be rendered on the server
> > side.
> >
> > i started work on some kind of book designer (still just proof of
> > concept), would very much appreciate this conversation to continue.
> > these days with html5 we could do magic and we could for sure make
> > something close to InDesign :) anyhoo, tool should help with: design
> > for online version, design for embeded html version, design for pdf
> > version. it must support different "projects", make uploading of
> > supported files possible (images and etc), online cover design
> > (titles, images, text, scale, move, resize...) and etc. i think it
> > would be something
> > very useful.
> >
> > aco
> 
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