[Mailman-Developers] Frames (was: unsubscriptions requiring approval)

[Gerrit Holl]

Thomas Wouters wrote on 950230906:
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 09:14:52PM +0100, Gerrit Holl wrote:
> > Thomas Wouters wrote on 950200274:
> 
> > > (It might be even worth it to take a look at a frames interface, possibly ?)
> 
> > Noooo! Please don't!
> > Sorry, but I really, really hate frames for several reasons.
> 
> I hate the whole smegging world wide web for mostly the same sort of
> reasons. Nevertheless, the Common User might appreciate, might even greatly
> appreciate, a frame-style interface.

The Common User might appreciate flash also. www.nielsonline.nl is a
perfect example of a page from hell.

> >     * I want to be able to admin my site in lynx, since I often haven't
> >       booted X and want to administrate fast,
> 
> This i consider a valid reason, and i concur. But the frame-style interface
> would, of bloody course, be _optional_.

Optional per list or optional per site? I hope the former, since I wouldn't
want to administer a list through frames...

> >     * it's neither in the HTML 4.01, nor in the XHTML 1.0 dtd. There's a
> >       seperate DTD for it. I think we should conform the HTML to XHTML 1.0
> >       anyway (comments?),
> 
> This might be a valid reason, but i dont follow the standards business
> regarding the WWW anymore. HTML 1.0 was ok, 1.1 had neat tricks but wasn't a
> real standard, and it just went downhill from there ;)

Put www.yahoo.com in validator.w3.org :)

> >     * it's not possible to bookmark a frames page, you can't bookmark the
> >       combination of the frames,
> >     * in netscape, the images button doesn't work on frames,
> >     * the sidebar needs to use javascript, and javascript is hard to maintain,
> >     * it's often unclear which frame you selected, so scrolling is hard,
> >     * you can't have a quick look at the HTML source code (I use to do that
> >       very often).
> 
> These are pure browser bugs. Fix the browser, get a different one, complain
> to the author, or avoid frame-based pages ;)

I _do_ have the source code, but my computer isn't fast enough to compile,
let alone to debug... and I don't know enough C to understand Mozilla...
Let's wait til the others fix it :)

> > I'd rather administrate my lists by email than using frames!
> > Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but please, no frames!
> 
> Hey, like I said, I dont like the web. I would honestly prefer an (optional,
> etc, yahdah yahdah) email-based administration system for everything but the
> configuration. (In fact, email-based responses to admin-requests are one
> thing still on my personal TODO-drool-list) And the configuration is
> preferably done via a text file, not a webpage ;) (i wont be adding that to
> my TODO list, though.) The reason I like mailman, and one of the reason we
> are changing from majordomo to mailman, is that we run the service for
> customers as well as for ourselves, and our customers would be in heaven
> with Mailman. (Will be in heaven. ;)

It also just has more features.

> And I'm not talking about frames just for the layout, by the way. You can
> use frames to change part of the displayed page without reloading the whole
> thing, without erasing parts of a form you have filled in in another part of
> the page.

Oh... Inline frames??

> For instance (just a thing i just made up now) the posting-approve admin
> interface could be a list of requests, each with the same buttons as now,
> plus three extra buttons per posting: display headers, body, or both (and
> perhaps a 'limited headers' setting with the body to show only the headers
> most email programs show) -- and the requested parts would be shown in a
> seperate frame.
> 
> In order to do that without frames, and not lose form data, would be either
> to make the things pop up in another browser window (is that a standard HTML
> extention, by the way ? Mailman already uses it)

If it isn't javascript, it's HTML 3.2.

> which is, IMHO, worse than
> frames, or by making all those 'view' buttons be form submit buttons, and
> have the python script display the requested parts plus all form data.
> 
> I agree with everyone who says 'HTML is not intended for interactive use', I
> agree completely. The problem is, Mailman _is_ using it interactively ;)

Hmm... what about using sockets for clients?
We could write a socket server with commands like "SUBSCRIBE",
"UNSUBSCRIBE", "SET" or "UNSET" for users or "PASSWORD", "SET",
"UNSET" or "POSTERS". We could create a client for the people
not wanting frames than...

regards,
Gerrit.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit
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