A Very Brief Overview of the March Emerald Sprint

From March 13–17, 17 core contributors (including 2 designers!) converged on Whidbey Island, Washington, U.S. to rework entire user registration and login process for Plone 5.

Login Converted to z3c.form

One major project was converting the login form to z3c.form to create a setup that’s easier to follow, has more hooks for customization, and provides better test coverage. For example, users will have the option to log in with GitHub, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and when registering, new users will benefit from a password strength checker and be asked to confirm their email address.

(added 3/28) plone.login: updating Plone’s login, by Andy Leeb

(click on image to enlarge)

Member Profiles Created

Replacing both the Author (/author/username) and Personal Information (/@@personal-information) pages is the Member Profile. The Profile will still include personal information and authored items, but will add recent activity and display it all on one page, in a clean and flexible layout.

(click on images to enlarge)

Behind this new look and layout is a foundation that uses Dexterity's schema and schema editor as proposed in PLIP #13350, Define Extra Members Properties TTW (through-the-web). This was tied into one of the Sprint’s big ideas, which Steve McMahon talks about in his blog post, User Property Frolics on the Sound.

(added 3/28) User Data Schemas, by Luke

Revamping the User and Groups Control Panel

The new User Groups and Control Panel will have some nice additions for site managers (users who have access to Site Setup but not ZMI) without compromising the needs of site administrators (power-users).

The choice between “many users” or “many groups” will fall by the wayside. When a site reaches the threshold of one or the other, the relevant setting will be automatically applied.

A new security control panel will feature a simple interface to set global settings. Security settings located in other control panels and those at  /@@security-controlpanel will be collapsed behind a scale of low, medium, or high security. This will be really helpful for site managers who may not know or care much about ins-and-outs of security, but won’t restrict site administrators from overriding or customizing those settings.

These are but a couple of pieces of the vision to overhaul the User and Groups Control Panel. Plans include the addition of bulk actions, expanded user information, and the ability to filter and sort members. David Glick explains this, shows some mockups, and talks about the the master plan for User Preferences in his post, Emerald Sprint Report: Users Control Panel and User Preferences.

Designers, Discoveries, and a Video

As one of two designers at the Sprint, Cal Doval proves that designers have a lot to offer. See how small user interface changes make a big difference in his post, Redesigning Plone 5’s Control Panel.

Trish Ang, also a designer, shares her top three discoveries—a must read for designers, integrators, and everyone else who doesn’t think of himself/herself as a developer. Check out her post, It Takes a Village.

Task lists, mock-ups, screenshots, and the aforementioned blog posts are available via the Plone Emerald Sprint Summary page.

Last but not least, we can all peek into the antics, er, hard work, of the Sprint team in Trish’s video montage (also featured in David's blog post).