[commits] Horde branch newprefsui created. 6e6599dfe74533b868cb0aaa80eeb6a2d482ce92

[Michael M Slusarz]

The branch "newprefsui" has been created.
        at  6e6599dfe74533b868cb0aaa80eeb6a2d482ce92 (commit)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
commit 6e6599dfe74533b868cb0aaa80eeb6a2d482ce92
Author: Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at curecanti.org>
Date:   Thu Mar 25 11:55:04 2010 -0600

    Preferences UI rewrite.
    
    Goals of the rewrite:
    1. Make ALL preference page display across ALL applications handled by a
    single point: the horde services preference page. This means moving all
    application specifc preference handling to inside of
    Horde_Registry_Application functions. NO page, other than
    horde/services/prefs.php, should be using the Horde Prefs UI functions
    anymore.
    2. Move Horde Prefs UI code out of Prefs package and into the Core
    package. UI handling is not something that should be handled by a
    library (will eventually move other things out of Prefs too, including
    Category Management and Identity code, since this is code that overlays
    the Prefs driver in a Horde-specific manner)
    3. Simplify the prefs UI configuration. Don't require 'shared' or
    'locked' entries (default to false) or 'type' entry (default to
    'implicit'). Remove some unneeded types (select). Improve documentation.
    4. Handle dynamic population of entries and suppression of prefGroups
    and specific preferences in Application::prefsInit(). This code confuses
    the prefs.php file.
    5. Abstract out some common 'special' preference handlers.  For
    example, identical addressbook selection code is used in several
    applications (imp, kronolith, whups). Move this code to a prefs UI
    widgets class so it can be reused.
    6. Convert prefs templates to Horde_Template. As always, I know the
    arguments against HT, but the simple fact is that is still the only
    time-tested method that we used and it does produce a template file that
    is easy to edit. Not to mention that the PHP code polluting the old
    include files made these files absolutely unreadable and/or
    maintainable.
    7. Remove credentials code.  It wasn't being used anywhere in the code (I
    believe it used to be a hack for IMP-related auth in Horde 3.x, but
    shouldn't be needed anymore due to new authentication code).
    8. Other improvements that have escaped my mind since I have been
    working on this code for several weeks now...
    
    Reasons for the rewrite:
    1. The old Prefs UI code was ancient and a mess.  It was a static file
    and globals were used all over the place.  New UI code is OO-based and
    allows us to pass the object around, making these like suppression of
    groups/prefs, hiding buttons, and current state identification much
    easier and cleaner.
    2. There is a need to redo the UI itself, especially for dynamic
    apps, to allow for a different/better preferences experience. Thus, the
    UI will eventually be able to be themed based on the current view type
    (dynamic, standard, mobile/minimal). To do this, all UI needs to be
    controlled from a single source, rather than disparate scripts.
    3. Add ability to mark preferences as 'advanced' so they are not shown
    by default.  This is prefereable to the current method of 'locking'
    advanced prefs.  Admins may very well want users to be able to change a
    pref, but they don't want that pref shown to basic users.