#184: Include more/improved portlets

Contents

1. Definitions
2. Motivation
3. Assumptions
4. Proposal
5. Implementation
6. Deliverables
7. Risks
8. Progress log
9. Participants

Proposed by

Jon Stahl

Proposal type

User interface

Assigned to release

• Plone 3.1

State

completed

Definitions

 

Motivation

Plone 3's new portlets' infrastructure pushes a fantastic degree of control to site managers.

There are a couple of key portlets that really oughta ship "out of the box" to cover common use-cases, and to ensure that Plone offers a smooth 'entry ramp' to new site admins.  This PLIP aims to collect them.

Assumptions

 

Proposal

Portlets that should be written for Plone 3.1 include:

• A "static content" portlet, which allows users to put arbitrary HTML content into a portlet.

• A generic "Collection" portlet that can display the results of a Collection (Smart Folder) in a portlet.  This will need careful attention to configurability to avoid user frustration.
• An RSS portlet that works for anonymous users, and allows for the display of multiple feeds.
  

Please feel free to edit this PLIP to add additional good ideas.

Implementation

• plone.portlet.static has a branch aimed at Plone 3.1, which depends on the PLIP 200 branch of plone.app.form to gain a Kupu widget. This is largely complete.
  
• plone.portlet.collection has a branch aimed at Plone 3.1. Again, this is largely complete. However, a better caching strategy should be considered either pre- or post-merge.
  

These are both standalone products. Merging them will involve putting them into the various bundles and installer sources, adding an <include /> statement to Plone's configure.zcml to alleviate the need for a ZCML slug, and running their GenericSetup profiles on installation.

Alternatively, the portlets could be merged into the plone.app.portlets package, but there is no overwhelmingly compelling reason to do so.

Deliverables

 

Risks

 

Progress log

• Static text portlet (plone.portlet.static) largely complete
• Collection portlet (plone.portlet.collection) largely complete, but requires a proper caching strategy
  
• Wichert has implemented collective.portlet.feedmixer, which provides a nice replacement for CMFSin's RSS aggregation capabilities. This needs to be investigated to determine whether it is ready for Plone 3.1
  

Participants