[Mailman-Developers] UI for Mailman 3.0 update

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jun 05, 2010, at 07:52 PM, Geoff Shang wrote:

>I realise that Mailman 3.x will make it possible to create multiple UIs, 
>as the functionality will be separated from the UI.  However, it is also 
>my experience that alternate/specialised UIs can and do go unmaintained, 
>and as such it is my hope that the (or at least a) standard UI shipped by 
>default with Mailman will provide the needed accessibility.
>
>So this is one of the reasons why I'm on this list, to keep an eye on 
>developments and hopefully provide some feedback when a test server 
>becomes available.

That's great Geoff, we appreciate all your help in understanding the issues
and driving toward a ui that's at least as usable as the MM 2.1 interface is.

I have a general question though: given that Mailman 3 will be scriptable, is
that a better long term solution than screen scraping?  We still need to work
out the security model for public access (i.e. OAuth, a proxy to the internal
admin interface, etc), but I think it'll be very cool to write the scripts you
want and actually interact with Mailman without using a wui.

>1.  At least one UI with no *necessary* javascript. Maybe this won't be 
>the main UI, but as a person who uses the Linux console with a text-mode 
>browser, I like the fact that I can quickly fire up my browser to deal 
>with a moderator request with no fuss.  Given that a package like 
>Squirrelmail can operate completely without Javascript if the user 
>chooses, this should surely be possible.

+1.  We want links/lynx users to be able to use the site.

>2.  Proper use of the label tag in association with form elements.  This 
>was (or seemed to be done) fairly well for the most part, with the 
>exception of those checkboxes I mentioned, but I'd hate to see this lost. 
>What this means in practice is that screen readers will read the 
>appropriate label text when focusing upon a form element.
>
>There's probably other important stuff, but this is all that comes to mind 
>right now.
>
>Other non-accessibility-related things which I think are worth considering 
>are:
>
>1.  More useful archives with search capability.  I'm sure this is on a 
>dozen wishlists.

Indeed. :)  You know that song by the Bare Naked Ladies?  Well, if *I* had a
million dollars, I'd write a killer new open source mail archiver. :)

>2.  A friendlier front page per list.  Surely having 3 forms on the front 
>page (or is it 4?) is a bit intimidating to some.

Definitely.

>I've got some other feature requests based on 2.1.x functionality but I'll 
>post that somewhere else more appropriate.

Looking forward to it!
-Barry
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