[dev] rewrite of Horde_Form

[Matt Warden]

Chuck,

On 6/5/05, Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org> wrote:
> Sounds good. Keep your eyes peeled on our wiki page for the next day or
> so, I'll be adding some ideas on how a Horde_Form rewrite could be part
> of a next-gen Horde app development engine. Would standardize things to
> make ajax able to rely on a certain structure, that sort of thing.

I'm looking forward to seeing these ideas. I'm not sure whether you
were referring to the client side or the server side of things, or the
interaction of the two. As I said, I think I have some good ideas
about abstracting and encapsulating the interaction of the two (the
same ideas that are to be published on DevX).

Further, on the strict client side of things, one thing we might want
to keep in mind is adhering to unobtrusive javascript (forgive me if
I'm preaching to the choir -- see:
http://www.onlinetools.org/articles/unobtrusivejavascript/ ), as I
feel AJAX should be subject to the same restrictions that most agree
should be applied to Javascript (for obvious reasons, as AJAX of
course uses Javascript; but also for other reasons). I have a pretty
good example of using Javascript unobtrusively in my sandbox at
http://mwarden.f2o.org/sandbox/collapsible_elements.htm (it was a
functional test and could use some visual cues as to what to do --
just click on 'expand/collapse'). Note how there is no intermingling
of Javascript in the markup (i.e., every bit of JS could have just as
easily been moved to an external file), and all Javascript-specific
element attributes are set via DOM. Additionally, if you turn off
Javascript, you'll notice that the paragraph will be shown even if it
is supposed to be initially hidden (thus, it is fully accessible).

Again, sorry if I'm preaching to the choir, but it is probably
something that would be good to keep in mind when thinking about the
design of these additions.

> > I have not applied for this via Google's Summer of Code application
> > page, because your wiki said to contact this list. As this is not the
> > typical process, please let me know what the next step is.
> 
> You should apply via Google whenever you feel like you have enough
> information to make a good application. Discussion on the list is for
> your benefit if you're unsure of what you want to do, or need more
> specifics on a project, etc. I'll update the wiki to try and make that
> more clear.

I see. Unfortunately, I went ahead and and applied after Mr. Djukic
responded, and obviously didn't include what has been discussed here
since.

-- 
Matt Warden
Miami University
Oxford, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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