Information

This contains the rough outline of the RSF design experience presentation by Aaron Zeckoski and Harriet Truscott of Cambridge University.

Outline

• RSF intro
  • positives
    • more flexibility for design freedom
    • ability to rapidly adjust an interface
    • mockups and wireframes possible and become the working views
    • introduce idea of templates at this point
    • multiple templates possible
    • forces valid XML (encourages valid XHTML) why is this good?

Show an example at this point - e.g. Pigeonhole?

• • negatives
    • too flexible?, encourages weak design up front since "it can always be fixed later"
    • Don't use this as an excuse for poor planning!
    • CSS does not like the colons in some RSF ids

• • • Use id based styling as little as possible (this is also helpful when a lot of JS is being used)
  •  
  • TIPS
    • If you haven't used RSF before, there are things that you can do wrong. We know because we did them wrong!
    • "boxes", layout is important, don't nest containers unnecessarily
      • OK - forms and lists
      • BAD - most everything else
    • overly complex templates can be hard to manage and work with later (also not previewable typically)
      • split up into multiple pages or into evolvers (includes) or components
    • Filler text should be used appropriately
      • Use a lorem ipsum generator (http://www.lipsum.com/)
      • Avoid anything controversial, "stupid username goes here"
      • Avoid describing simple things and use appropriate approximates, "the username is located in this place" (this is far too long compared to a normal username)
      • Don't leave blank! (take advantage of this feature for previewability)
    •  
• Examples
  • Fixing a template which is overly complex - Is this really relevant for UCamp?
  • Plugging in a template into an RSF tool

• Hattie - first experience with RSF was flowtalk (not a great experience)
• Difficult because having a separate designer was an afterthought (redesign came late in development)
• One massive template and view for most things, one additional template for everything else (basically 2 views)
• Difficult to work with the massive template, ordering in a huge template was hard to do
• RSF from the developer perspective
• Easier than most other Sakai technologies (such as JSF and struts), harder than JSPs and Velocity for simple things
• Enforces better programming practices
• Can be hard to work with XHTML sometimes but since it accepts valid XML only there is a way to check it
• helps to have experts around to ask questions to (community support important)