[FM Discuss] UI Challenge

[Joshua Facemyer]

I absolutely don't agree with the idea that we can't put a tool out 
there that people might have to learn a little bit to use.  However, I 
do agree that it might be useful to have a "simple" mode and a "get 
dirty" mode - less for the benefit of people who don't want to really 
learn how to do things like CSS, and more for the fact that it could be 
set up to simplify style selection for everyone (i.e. automatical 
resizing of element margins/padding using ems, etc).

The biggest difficulty, as I see it, is deciding what you're going to 
limit the selections to in "simple" mode.  Otherwise, it sounds like a 
really great idea.

However, I think that the direct CSS editing feature will be the thing 
that actually makes this a "killer app".  (Not intending in any way to 
sound l33t, but often only "power users" end up actually using the best 
functionality of great apps - that's exactly what makes someone a "power 
user".  Hopefully we can help more people to become "power users" of 
Booki by helping them to learn the best ways to style their books with 
fullest control.)

I would want to be able to switch from "simple" to "get dirty" to make 
further changes once the basics are defined - though converting back 
would probably be impossible.

I "think" this "message" needs a few more "quotation marks".  ;)

JF

On 08/31/2010 05:10 PM, John Curwood wrote:

> 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.
>