Symphony.

I mentioned it in some threads that I like to create a Symphony UI plugin (similar to the new duplicator javascript) that unifies the interface and behaviour of my Date and Time and Mediathek extensions.

Stage will be a utility for Symphony extensions that helps creating an interface for managing multiple inline elements in the backend (adding new items, removing items, sorting items). My repository for this project can be found on GitHub, http://github.com/nilshoerrmann/stage.

Screenshot of the Date and Time field

Screenshot of the Mediathek field

Concept for Stage

As you can see, I started with the layout of the Date and Time interface which is extended by the needs of Mediathek. This is just a first concept of possible features and I’m really be interested in feedback of users of those extensions or other developer who might be interested in using the stage plugin.

So please post thoughts and ideas.

This sounds really interesting. Well presented :-)

I haven’t had a chance to think about the Stage concept as a whole, but I’ll say initially this feels very similar to the existing Duplicator which :

• has a “stage” of items (rows)
• allows for items to be added and removed from the stage
• allows for draggable re-ordering of items on the stage
• allows for items to be expanded/collapsed (in beta, awaiting approval from the core team I think)

Because they are so similar, I think it’d be a step backwards to start from scratch. It might save time in the long run to collaborate with Rowan on his Duplicator/Orderable plugins?

Well the idea was to build upon those and extend Rowan’s plugins. Rowan’s plugins offer most of the functionality I need but they are tailored for the core Symphony use. Stage should be more focussed on the concepts of the mentioned extensions and should simplify the interface creation for those. So it might be understood as some kind of meta plugin.

Some things – like item creation or deletion, drag and drop – will be handled differently in relation to the core plugins. And I think that the look and feel of the core plugins does not match the needs of the content sections which uses a two column layout and have (“traditionally”) been using lighter colors than the other backend areas.

But these are things that should be discussed here - that’s why I started this thread :)

Maybe a note to clarify things. Stage will combine three different concepts:

1. a list of items (duplicatable, reorderable, droppable) = selected items
2. a search (for entries) = link to a related section
3. a queue of new/stored items (like entries from a linked section) = unselected items

Stage looks very interesting. Nils, when it comes time for the team to start on the UI update for 2.1, I could hook you in to those discussions. It might not directly apply to your particular framework, but the changes in the core UI, especially the updates to the duplicator might be of interest to you.

@Nils:

Nils, could you please make Stage an independent extension instead of packaging it with Subsection Manager and Date/Time-field?

I've ran into problems with this before, where the Date/Time would not function if there was no Subsection Manager present in the section, and in another case both the SSM and the Date/Time field broke the entire publish page. To resolve this I had to copy the files if lib/stage in SMM to lib/stage of the Date/Time-field.

I like the idea that you build a library which extends the core functionality of the backend, and to supply something for other developers to build on, but especially because of that I think it should be seperated from the extensions which use them. Not even to mention the issues that could occur when extension A uses Stage version X and extension B uses version Y.

For the same reason that SymQL is an extension that is not embedded in each extension that uses it, or that the language redirect extension is not embedded in each multilanguage-extension that uses it.

I think it would lead to a much better and more managable core to work with.

I believe something like this has been mentioned before on the forum, but I can't seem to find that particular post.